Cohen Watch

Scott Lee Cohen's tune seems to be changing. The media is digging more into his story and painting an uglier picture. Early on Friday he was sticking to his stance that the people of Illinois had voted for him and he was staying. On Twitter a bunch of people were saying the same thing. Warning that if we let the party nudge someone off the ticket for being unsavory or unlikeable, well then democracy would start down that slippery slope of ethics into a place where party bosses would hand pick candidates.

What the hell do people think already happens?

Cohen represents not a victory for independent candidates winning out against the machine or party, but rather another prime example that if you blanket the airwaves and stuff enough propaganda into our mailboxes, your name sticks out on election day.

While many a people are in a huff over Mark Brown being an accomplice to Cohen's shenanigans by not reminding us that he had domestic violence in his past, it should be more clear to people that the Democratic party also failed us. Steve Rhodes at The Beachwood Reporter points out that the party started to worry as it looked more likely that Cohen might actually pull this baby out. Did they stand up and ask him to drop out at that point? Privately, who knows. Publicly? Hell no. Did they get together and pick a candidate to throw their weight behind? Again, privately who knows...Publicly, another failure of leadership.

But now, now that the people know who Cohen really is, what he has done in the past and perhaps is still doing by not paying alimony and child support on time, the party leaders are coming out and asking Cohen to step down. Sadly my own alderman is STANDING by his endorsement, while Ald. Waguespack and Personal PAC have revoked their endorsement of Cohen. And while he didn't endorse him, Da Mayor won't ask Cohen to step down. Cohen's website removed the list of endorsements, but I took a screen shot and WBEZ copied it down. Take a look, if someone on that list represents you, give them a call.

While Cohen may be spending the weekend trying to walk away from this embarrassment with a shred of dignity, this isn't about his dignity or the dignity of the Democratic party for me. It's about how the media, politicians and others view domestic violence.

The Chicago Foundation for Women held a press conference with Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Voices and Faces Project, Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago and Rape Victim Advocates to denounce HOW domestic violence was being treated in the Cohen situation. Kelly White, Executive Director of Chicago Foundation for Women: "Domestic violence is not about having a bad day, or going through a rough patch in your life. Domestic violence is not about falling in with the wrong crowd or taking a bad drug. Those are excuses and platitudes that we’ve heard too many times and we shouldn’t accept in our families, from our neighbors or certainly not from public officials.”

Cohen's story does not just involve hitting his ex-wife or threatening his ex-girlfriend, but that ex-girlfriend works at a massage parlor known for prostitution. Massage parlors, in general, are often sites for not just prostitution, but human trafficking. According to a 2007 Cook County report [PDF], 90% of the "$14 billion dollar industry...occurs through supposedly ‘legal’ establishments such as escort services, strip clubs and massage parlors." The CFW press release frames the issue: "Large numbers of women residing in Illinois thus experience domestic and sexual violence. Every day 16,000 women and girls are involved in prostitution and sex trafficking in Chicago, the vast majority of whom experience high levels of violence and exploitation."

The ability for so many people before and after the election to wave off Cohen's actions speaks volumes to how we view domestic violence. Other candidates knew of Cohen's issues, others in the media must have known as well. Brown couldn't had been the only columnist to know as well. But clearly, clearly the party knew what was up and did nothing.

Yes, as voters we need to know who we are voting for, but we also rely on the so-called Fourth Estate to keep citizens informed. I am trying to figure out how must of this is a failure of the press versus failure of how far the media has fallen in terms of lack of staff, researchers and plain old space in the newspaper.

In the end, my objection to Cohen being on the ticket is that he is an abuser. He has admitted that he abused his ex-wife and I don't accept the excuse that he was full of roid rage. Yes, people change, but his actions and words from the past few days tell me that he's still got a lot of growing, learning and changing to do. And I don't want to pay his salary as he's doing it.

Just what Illinois politics needed: Scott Lee Cohen

Blago. Burris. Stroger. We thought we had finally turned a corner Tuesday night. Even with the weight of Alexi's family's bank saga, we at least were moving away from embarrassing politicians. We cheered the defeat of Todd Stroger and wished Toni Preckwinkle all the luck of a field of four-leaf clovers, cause she's gonna need it to clean up the mess of Cook County. Then we woke up on Thursday to news that 212,902, er, 212, 901 voters didn't do a good Google search of their candidate.

Scott Lee Cohen admits to choking his ex-wife and violence against his ex-girlfriend. He didn't fess up after someone dug it up either. He TOLD us...a year ago. Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times, details how he and the rest of the media brushed aside Cohen's admission of domestic violence:

Let the record reflect that on the very day last March that Scott Lee Cohen announced his campaign for lieutenant governor of Illinois, he voluntarily disclosed he had once been arrested in what he described as a domestic battery case involving a live-in girlfriend.

Please, take a minute to click over the read the entire column. It outlines a failure of the media to remind us of important information about a candidate (compare to Chicago's media all buy telling us to NOT vote for Blago in 2006), failure of voters to do adequate research on the person they were going to vote for (don't just go by endorsements) and his candidates for not making this an issue.

Now that he is the Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor, the press is running with the story and the Democratic party is asking him to step down. Nope, says Cohen, "The people voted for me."

And sadly he's right.

He made the rounds on Chicago media to tell his story and why he's not stepping down. I missed the WTTW interview, but the comments are on fire! I can't wait to see the actual interview. But it was his interview with ABC7 that sealed the deal for me. Here's how he responds to charges of being abusive to his ex-wife:

"You don't stay with somebody for 26 years when they're hittin' and beatin' you. You don't," 

BULLSHIT.

He could be the greatest man in the world, but no one, no one who truly believes what Cohen said on TV (go watch the clip) can truly represent Illinois and be, as Eric Zorn said, "one heartbeat or one federal indictment away from becoming governor of Illinois."

Illinois' women's health page on domestic violence states that leaving a violent relationship is dangerous. "In 2000, intimate partner homicides accounted for 33.5 percent of the murders of women and less than four percent of the murders of men." And women know that. We might not know the exact stat, but we know that there is a sliver of reality when a man says he'll kill us or we'll never see our kids again if we leave him. I won't go on as I'm sure one of our fab domestic violence organizations will cover this soon.

Even if the allegations were false, someone with this mentality about domestic violence should not be this close to being the Governor of Illinois.

I'll be awaiting the press releases of everyone on the endorsement list disavowing Cohen and demanding that he step down.

I urge anyone who did vote for Cohen to demand that he step aside.

I agree with Progress Illinois, this is just the latest in a long series of embarrassments. Who would have thought that Alan Keyes wouldn't even be in the top 10?

Want to adopt a Haitian orphan? WAIT!

This post was written right after American missionaries were arrested and originally posted on the AWEARNESS blog. 

I admit that my husband and I had "the talk." The "Can we adopt a child from Haiti?" talk. Of course it was out of sheer love for the children who need help, but we quickly snapped back to reality: Now is not the time to get in line for a child.

Apparently some people think otherwise. Ten Americans were arrested over the weekend for child trafficking out of Haiti. Of course they say they were just trying to help by scooping up children and taking them across the border to an orphanage, but hey, I think that is the definition of child trafficking.

I get it. I also want to jump on a plane and bring a bunch of kids home with me. I want to clothe them, feed them and love them. But I know that they are Haitian and Haiti is their home. I also know that people have been displaced. Children were at school when the earthquake hit. How do we know if their mother was one of the people flown out of the country for medical help? Or is in the refugee camp on the other side of the city? We can't know all of the facts. The Independent has a good Q&A on the ethics of disaster adoption.

When we've had conversations about adoption, I've found myself focusing on whether or not I have the emotional strength to guide a child along the path. A newborn or an older child will question their adoption at some point. I can only imagine the emotional wounds that will need to be addressed for all the people of Haiti, much less a child airlifted from their homeland and extended family.

But I continue to reject the notion that I know how to provide a "better life" for a child. I think that once you start to believe that you can overlook the formalities that go with international adoption, like, say making sure that no one in their biological family can care for them. Airlifts of children have happened before, such as Operation Peter Pan, and some of those children are grown now and mad as hell about the thought of the same thing happening to Haitian children.

Instead of running out to adopt a Haitian child, I suggest giving to an organization that is focusing on helping to rebuild Haiti and reuniting families. There will be a time when adoptions will be the answer for some children. Until then, let's wait.