After Elizabeth Warren was silenced by Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor back in early February, “she persisted” became a rallying cry for many. My own first reaction was to make a T-shirt that said “#ShePersisted”.<\/p>\n
My second thought was to realize that in the time I’d had that thought, people everywhere were already making those shirts. So I went on-line and bought one. It’s become one of my favorite T-shirts.<\/p>\n
I happened to be wearing it on the train back from Boston to NY yesterday. I got several thumbs ups from women riding the train, but I didn’t see a single glimmer of recognition from any of the male riders.<\/p>\n
The woman working behind the counter at the cafe car asked me what the shirt meant. I tried to think of a way to explain it that wouldn’t take too long, since I figured other people might start to show up in line behind me.<\/p>\n
Then it occurred to me that there was a shortcut, since the woman I was talking to was black. So when I explained how Elizabeth Warren was silenced by Mitch McConnell for trying to read a letter aloud on the Senate floor, I pointed out that the letter was by Coretta Scott King.<\/p>\n
That got my listener’s attention. Not only can a female Senator be silenced for doing something male senators do all the time, but the words of Coretta Scott King, of all people, can be considered unacceptable when read aloud.<\/p>\n
It’s also interesting how the right T-shirt can serve as a conversation starter for important discussions among citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After Elizabeth Warren was silenced by Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor back in early February, “she persisted” became a rallying cry for many. My own first reaction was to make a T-shirt that said “#ShePersisted”. My second thought was to realize that in the time I’d had that thought, people everywhere were already making … Continue reading “Conversation starter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18617"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18618,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18617\/revisions\/18618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}