bringing causes to life

I can tell you from having been on the front lines of the high-rollers who keep politicians in office that – while not all are looking for a special tax loophole for their industry or an appointment to the Court of St James – they absolutely have unparalleled access to elected office holders.  So, I was struck by David Kirpatrick’s emphasis simply on no proof of corruption in his NYT piece “Does Corporate Money Lead to Political Corruption?  I was at Harvard’s JFK School of Government  a year before I was the NY Finance Chair and the National Vice Chair of the euphemistically named 1988 Democratic Presidential Victory Fund.  That’s when the Times coined a phrase I agree with, “sewer money,” which ended more than a decade of my high-level political fundraising. Read the rest of this entry »

As a board member of the World Policy Institute I heard my SheSource colleague Patricia DeGennaro, an expert on National Security issues, describe recent efforts to improve civilian-military cooperation in Afghanistan.  She outlined a comprehensive update of the “whole of governance” philosophy and practice that integrates defense, diplomacy and development as integral, inter-related components to achieving effective foreign policy objectives.  Her analysis of the impact this has on foreign policy was striking and it reinforced my experience-based perspective on all for- and not-for-profit capacity-building efforts local, national, regional or global.  Read the rest of this entry »

I was enthralled when Georgetown University Law Center Professor Emma Coleman Jordan gave the Fourteenth Annual Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society.  Her talk, “Race and New Economic Connection in Subprime Crisis” was the most coherent analysis of economic justice I’ve ever heard.  Everything she spoke about relates to points I’ve made in my recent posts on Inequity and to issues I’ve explored for decades.  But she wove together myriad strands of insight into the most magnificent whole cloth that made simple to grasp incredibly complex topics.  Read the rest of this entry »

As we commemorate the 37th anniversary of Salt II, Iran plans to build ten new uranium enrichment plants.   Many Americans have just celebrated Thanksgiving and Muslims from around the world have just made their Hajj to Mecca for Eid al-Adha.  So, this news has particular dissonance during the season of hope we’re entering that culminates with different faith-based traditions celebrating in their own way light at the darkest time of the year.  With other nations also pursuing similar ambitions, we are moving away from nuclear disarmament.  Read the rest of this entry »

The 2002 Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which required public companies not just to have internal controls against fraud – something by law they had to do since 1977– but through its Section 404 also mandated them to report on whether they maintained these controls.  As a board member often chairing governance sub-committees, I have used Sarbanes-Oxley as the gold standard not just to guide procedures of for-profit but also of not-for-profit organizations.  Read the rest of this entry »

I often say my social activist life can be summed up by, “from Selma to Soweto with a feminist perspective.”  So, to be with friends from many decades at The Feminist Press kick-off event for their 40th anniversary year was a sheer joy.  Award recipients included: Arianna Huffington, the trailblazing founder of Huffington Post; Taslina Nasrin, an extraordinarily brave Muslim physician, writer and human rights activist from Bangladesh; and Rhonda Copelon, a groundbreaking human rights attorney who worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights.  Read the rest of this entry »

Graham Bowley’s pieces in The New York Times “Bailout Helps Fuel New Era Wall Street Wealth” and “Bonuses Put Goldman in Public Relations Bind” and The Financial Times editorial “Public Needs More Bang for Its Buck” are among a rash of recent articles describing a disparity that virtually everyone is experiencing.  I find great cause for concern about the trend these pieces expose, as history shows that depriving many people of even the fundamental basics while a select few benefit astronomically never is sustainable.  Read the rest of this entry »

At 4:58am Archbishop Desmond Tutu sent me an email about President Barack Obama being the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.   Tutu used the affectionate terms by which I call him and his wife Leah and the one we use for fellow Nobel Peace Laureate President Nelson Mandela in writing, “Leah was crying with joy and disbelief as we watched an epoch-making event unfolding before our eyes.  What a fantastic result, what a fantastic human being, what fantastic people, what a fantastic country.   Read the rest of this entry »

I’d worked with diplomats and women’s rights activists from several nations to promote the passage in 2000 of 1325, a UN Security Council Resolution that mandates the protection, participation and promotion of women and their involvement in all aspects of peace processes.  Last week, during the opening of 64th UN General Assembly, I attended “Peace and Security through Women’s Leadership: Acting on 1325 and Climate Change” chaired by Presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Tarja Halonen of Finland.  They once again declared a call to action for implementation of 1325 before its 10th anniversary next year.  They also focused on the incorporation of a gender perspective to be included in the negotiations for a new agreement on climate change.  Read the rest of this entry »

Today my husband Jerry Dunfey and I visited Arlington Cemetary to pay our respects at the graveside of Senator Edward M “Ted” Kennedy and his brothers US President John F. Kennedy and US Senator Robert F Kennedy.  Having been at Ted’s funeral Aug 29, we wanted to say good sailing to our friend.  I was struck  when we went to Walter Cronkite’s memorial this Wednesday how at the respective services Teddy and Walter’s love of sailing was a metaphor for what they each had done with their remarkable lives.  As many spoke about leadership, I thought about how the sea – particularly when it gets rough – can either knock you around or you can navigate it with skill and patience and respect.