Steinem urges students to vote

  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Gloria Steinem
speaks in the Charles E. Young Grand Salon at noon on Thursday
about the importance of youth vote in the upcoming elections.

By Barbara Ortutay
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Gloria Steinem has seen her share of elections, and she called
this one the most important one of her lifetime.

Speaking to a crowd that packed and later spilled outside
Charles Young Grand Salon, the 66-year-old feminist icon asked
students to follow their conscience on Nov. 7.

“The art of behaving ethically is behaving as if
everything we do matters,” she said. “If we want Al
Gore in the White House instead of George Bush, we have to vote for
Gore instead of Bush.”

She also asked them to remember the past.

“I hope that we will think about the legacy of the civil
rights movement, the suffragist movement and the abolitionist
movement,” she said.

Speaking to the crowd of mostly female, mostly liberal college
students, Steinem also asked her listeners not to vote for Bush or
Ralph Nader ““ because even the latter choice might mean
getting the Republican candidate into the White House.

“I don’t know about you here, but it’s not
like I am tempted to vote for Bush,” she said as the crowd
laughed. “There is a reason why Nader’s support is
overwhelmingly white and middle class and more male than female.
It’s because these are the people who do not suffer as much
if Bush were in the White House.”

“If I were to run for president in the same symbolic way
that Nader is doing, I hope that those of you in this room would
have the good sense to vote against me too,” she said.

While calling him a “good person” in an interview
before her speech, Steinem said in her speech that Nader disparages
the women’s movement and the gay and lesbian movement.

“Nader’s “˜I don’t care if I put Bush in
the White House’ campaign is not something those of us who
knew and loved him in the past noticed him doing before he became
such an embittered and angry man,” she said.

Sponsored by the Bruin Democrats, Steinem stopped at UCLA as
part of a Voters For Choice bus tour, visiting college campuses
across the nation in a campaign to discuss the importance of this
year’s presidential elections and to urge students to vote
Democrat.

The bus, parked at Ackerman turnaround, drove on to Scripps
College later that afternoon, but this time with a handful of UCLA
students riding along.

After her speech, Steinem invited students to get on the bus
with her. Third-year anthropology student Sarah Farmer, along with
several others, didn’t hesitate.

“Mostly I think I wasn’t aware of how much this
year’s elections will impact the Supreme Court,” Farmer
said. “And really I just want to hang out with
Gloria.”

Steinem has been an icon of the feminist movement since the
1960s. She founded the National Women’s Political Caucus and
Ms. Magazine. Her published books include Revolution from
Within.

Steinem also helped found Voters for Choice in the late 1970s,
along with board members from the Ms. Foundation for Women and
Planned Parenthood.

“We felt there needed to be a political action committee
whose priority was reproductive freedom, which is as important as
freedom of speech,” she said.

Because the next president will appoint at least two new
justices to the Supreme Court, Steinem said Bush’s victory
could be detrimental to reproductive freedom, as well as issues
like gay rights and affirmative action.

“The Republican party platform is that abortion should be
criminalized even in cases of rape, incest or when the health of
the mother is in danger,” she said.

“To take George Bush at his word, he would use his power
of executive order, veto power and appointment of Supreme Court
justices to criminalize abortion, to dismantle the remaining
affirmative action and other remedies for racial
discrimination,” she continued.

The Republican platform, in fact, supports a “human life
amendment to the Constitution,” and endorses
“legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendments
protections apply to unborn children.”

After her speech, Steinem answered questions from the audience.
But, in less than an hour, she was back on the bus as quickly as
she came, but not before reminding students to continue the legacy
of the movement she has been a part of.

“There is absolutely no excuse now,” she said.
“Unless it’s apathy, unless it’s failing for
these arguments that the candidates are just alike, or that
politics is dirty and we don’t want to participate ““
there is no excuse.”