A New Argentina — and The Whole USA

In Argentina, the people took to the streets. They took to the streets for freedom to marry. They took to the streets for the most progressive gender laws in the world. They took to the streets for the right to safe abortion. There is, today, a new Argentina. Because her people took to the streets.

The title of the article was “How Support for Legal Abortion Went Mainstream in Argentina.” “The fight for legalization began decades ago, but it gained traction only as more women became lawmakers and a massive grass-roots effort shifted the conversation.”

Argentinians took to the streets, elected more women, and had grass-roots conversations.

Perhaps it’s time Americans considered the playbooks of other nations, as Paul Krugman so eloquently wrote yesterday. In fact, it’s way past time. Yes, yes, I know, we are rugged individualists, we say. We don’t need the playbooks of others!

Jorge Arangure, Jr. is “one of the lead editors of the Metro desk’s pandemic coverage.” At the beginning, he began “to keep a daily log of ideas, lists of articles in progress and notes of conversations in [a] notebook as a way to counter the many logistical challenges we faced after the newsroom closed in mid-March and we all began to work remotely.” In this morning’s paper, he looked back over the first notebook.

By March 25th, he wrote, “Whole system in crisis.”

I think that says it all. He was writing about a hospital in Elmhurst, Queens that had become the epicenter of the pandemic. I am writing about the Whole USA.

‘“Slugs,’ he writes, “are the names we give to articles. … On March 29, “NYVIRUS-INEQUALITY” appeared in my notebook for the first time. The premise was simple: How did income and racial inequalities play a part in how hospitals were able to treat virus patients?”

Income inequalities. Racial inequalities. Healthcare.

Beloved, these are agenda items, if we’ll make them so. Just like the agenda items the new Argentina has addressed: freedom to marry, gender identity, safe and legal abortion. Argentina even outlines how to address these: elect more women, recognize the equalities of all persons, have more local, grass-roots, community-organizing conversations.

It would appear that the science of archeology agrees. Contributing Opinion writer Annalee Newitz writes, “In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a paper in the academic journal Science Advances about the remains of a 9,000-year-old big-game hunter buried in the Andes. Like other hunters of the period, this person was buried with a specialized tool kit associated with stalking large game, including projectile points, scrapers for tanning hides and a tool that looked like a knife. There was nothing particularly unusual about the body — though the leg bones seemed a little slim for an adult male hunter. But when scientists analyzed the tooth enamel using a method borrowed from forensics that reveals whether a person carries the male or female version of a protein called amelogenin, the hunter turned out to be female.”

“The new data calls into question an influential dogma in the field of archaeology. Nicknamed ‘man the hunter,’ this is the notion that men and women in ancient societies had strictly defined roles: Men hunted, and women gathered. Now, this theory may be crumbling.”

It’s been crumbling for millennia, Beloved. Isn’t it time we recognized our inherent similarities across the gender spectrum and our inherent differences?

“As Thomas Emerson, who conducted the study, … said, “[T]he Cahokia discovery demonstrated the existence of male and female nobility. “We don’t have a system in which males are these dominant figures and females are playing bit parts.”

Perhaps women oughtn’t to accept the bit parts we’ve been offered for so long? My point, and the point to be made throughout these pages, is that until we divest ourselves of artificial social constructs, we cannot have our time in the streets or the real conversations necessary to create a whole or a new USA.

Ms. Newitz again, “Let’s be clear. These findings don’t reveal an ancient matriarchy. But neither do they reaffirm the idea of societies in which men dominate completely. What they indicate is a lot more mundane and relatable: Some women were warriors and leaders; many weren’t. There was inequality, but it wasn’t absolute, and there were a lot of shifts over time. When it comes to female power, and gender roles, the past was as ambiguous as the present.”

This is part of the human condition, Beloved, and we are well-advised to heed it. The future, just like the past and the present, is always ambiguous — till we create it. That’s what we’re doing here.

Have you given any thought at all to your own future? I’m sure you have. You want that Ph.D. or that fabulous holiday on Mars, or another baby, or a house in the country. We all have desires, and we all think about them in order to take the actions that create them. It’s hard to get to Mars if you’re glued to your sofa.

But it is also incumbent upon us to think about the future of our world as well and here is where humans fall down — constantly, and sadly, consistently. We go macro, and defeat ourselves before we even start. Stop, just stop.

Don’t pick up Climate Change. Pick up the trash on your street. Don’t pick up All of Systemic Racism. Go talk to folks at the hospital where you live and find out their experience. Don’t pick up All of Restitution for Slavery. Create a dialogue in your community about it.

Yes, yes, I know, some of us are called to the macro, but most of us aren’t. Most of us, if we’ll dig deep, simply want to make a difference right where we are, and we can — if we’ll take action. Some of us already are …

“WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit led by President Trump’s allies in Congress that aimed to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election, dealing a blow to lawmakers’ last-ditch effort to challenge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.”

In the State of Virginia, “A judge late last month ordered the removal of the portraits ahead of Terrance Shipp Jr.’s Jan. 4 trial, ruling that the presence of the artwork, depicting judges who served in Fairfax County, could have suggested that the legal system is biased. The judge, David Bernhard, wrote “that the court was concerned the portraits might “serve as unintended but implicit symbols that suggest the courtroom may be a place historically administered by whites for whites,’ and that others are thus of lesser standing. ‘The display of portraits of judges in courtrooms of the Fairfax Courthouse is based on a non-racial principle, yet yields a racial result.’

Sherry Soanes, a lawyer and a former law clerk in the Fairfax Circuit Court, called Judge Bernhard’s decision a “no-brainer,” adding that the move was a “step in the right direction.”

“While Ms. Soanes said she hoped the decision would lead other judges to take action, she was also emphatic that it wasn’t “putting racism in the closet. It’s a step to thinking about how is racism at play.”

Lastly, states are closing prisons and jails — that raised a whoopee from me. “Analysts say the root of the problem lies in mass incarceration, particularly in rural areas, where most of the closures are occurring.” Then this popped my happy balloon, “They’ve been transferring inmates this whole time. I know a lot of inmates, they’re transferred in — and a couple days after they get there, they go into the hospital with coronavirus. They had it before they even came in.”

Okay, so two steps forward, and one step back. Progress is never linear.

Poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, God bless him, gives me hope — and even more instruction.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Whole system in crisis?

Sure, let go false pride — national and personal. Let’s learn from wherever we can, Beloved.

Stop the name-calling, the lying, and the cruelty. Let’s pick up kindness and care of one another.

Open your heart, Beloved, you know what’s true, what’s right, what’s real.

Welcome the good, your personal good, and the common good. It sustains us all.

More conversation. More opportunity for all of us. We can do this, Beloved. If there can be a new Argentina, there can be a whole new USA.

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com