My Struggle to Regain My Civil Rights

July looms before me.

For the first time in 8 years, I must obtain a new Driver's License.

A lot has changed since I got the old one.

I won't blame  our fine governor, Rick Scott,  for the DL changes.... no, the effort to exclude people from driving in the state of Florida (and hence, having an official identity here) began in the Charlie Crist area.  It was simple.  Suddenly, in order to obtain a Driver's License, it wasn't enough to have one from another state, along with a Social Security card, like I had in 1996 when I first got my Florida DL, a document I have lawfully possessed for the last 17 years, requalifying for the card in 2004.

Now I must prove my birth, with an official birth certificate, complete with seal.... a document created on paper some 57 years ago (I have this; having replaced it in the last 10 years).    And, since I am a second-class citizen, a woman who, when married, ACTUALLY CHANGED HER LAST NAME to match her husband's... I must prove that my FORMER  last name on my birth certificate matches the former last name on my marriage license.  This document was obtained somewhere in Rochester, New York, some 33 years ago.

It is possible that my ex-husband still has that marriage certificate somewhere, with the original copy of my birth certificate, and those of my children, which were entrusted to his care by virtue of the fact that he got to keep the fireproof safe in the divorce.  I would call and ask, since we live on good terms, but that didn't work with the birth certificates, all of which I have paid to replace.  It is more likely that the marriage certificate got shredded than those birth papers anyway, meaningless piece of paper it was to him, especially after he remarried.  I digress.

I began my quest yesterday when I learned that, in the state of New York, where I was married, where virtually every official "thing" in the state...outside of the NYC boroughs,  is at the County level.  The County website eventually yielded the fact that the marriage license records are issued and stored by the TOWNSHIPS within the county.  It is likely that mine was issued (I confess, I remember the ceremony, not getting the license) in the town of Greece, where we lived and Frank worked...or in the city of Rochester, where I worked.  I have started with the town, which only accepts apps for copies by MAIL, with money orders attached.  If that doesn't work, I will need to go thru the same process with the city.  Hopefully, one of these two sorties will produce the document I need, some 33 years later, in order to prove that I can drive in Florida.   I ask the question... does this happen to married males?  If I qualified to change my SSN with the freakin' Federal government in 1979, and have filed tax returns ever since (and had DL's in two different states)....why the hell does Florida need to make me prove my name change?

Would you believe I also have to produce 2 utility bills at my current address to get the license?  That particular requirement is designed to curb the ability of non-property owners (translation...young citizens most probably born in Florida).  Good thing I pay my own utilities where I rent.

Oh, yes.  The DL?  The current governor's regime has passed strict new voting laws that could pose a problem for me since I am a renter.  Thus, once I have said DL, I will need to insure that I am properly VOTER REGISTERED, something I have done 8 times before in the state of Florida without having to prove my identity.  Thanks to Rick Scott, there are many, many new rules to follow before you can vote.  I like to think that Rick didn't restrict a large portion of the population (women, young people, the elderly, the indigent) just because he knows that I will vote to move his ass out of Tallahassee at my first opportunity.  He didn't really have anything against me... no more than the rest of women, young people, the elderly, the indigent.  His administration also removed the right of the incarcerated to vote.  I guess I know where I stand.

 I am registered as an independent (or was registered), so it is likely that that I will have no problem getting registered, once I show those utility bills and that much prized DL that I had to move heaven and earth to get.  It would be different if I was formerly registered as a  .... Democrat.  God knows what I would have to produce then.

I'm tired of this nonsense.

In fear for the people of Iran

Today will be a day of violence. It will resonate throughout the world.

Updated: 5:57 EDT

This just in from the NYT's Roger Cohen. A riveting account of today in Tehran:

TEHRAN — The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.
Dark smoke billowed over this vast city in the late afternoon. Motorbikes were set on fire, sending bursts of bright flame skyward. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of “bloodshed and chaos” if protests over a disputed election persisted.
He got both on Saturday — and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet. A multitude of Iranians took their fight through a holy breach on Saturday from which there appears to be scant turning back.
Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.


He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura.
The taboo-breaking response was unequivocal. It’s funny how people’s obsessions come back to bite them. I’ve been hearing about Khamenei’s fear of “velvet revolutions” for months now. There was nothing velvet about Saturday’s clashes. In fact, the initial quest to have Moussavi’s votes properly counted and Ahmadinejad unseated has shifted to a broader confrontation with the regime itself.
Garbage burned. Crowds bayed. Smoke from tear gas swirled. Hurled bricks sent phalanxes of police, some with automatic rifles, into retreat to the accompaniment of cheers. Early afternoon rumors that the rally for Moussavi had been canceled yielded to the reality of violent confrontation.
I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basij. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all together, don’t be scared,” the crowd shouted.
I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”
Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her.
There were people of all ages. I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad.
“Can’t the United Nations help us?” one woman asked me. I said I doubted that very much. “So,” she said, “we are on our own.”
The world is watching, and technology is connecting, and the West is sending what signals it can, but in the end that is true. Iranians have fought this lonely fight for a long time: to be free, to have a measure of democracy.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, understood that, weaving a little plurality into an authoritarian system. That pluralism has ebbed and flowed since 1979 — mainly the former — but last week it was crushed with blunt brutality. That is why a whole new generation of Iranians, their intelligence insulted, has risen.
I’d say the momentum is with them for now. At moments on Saturday, Khamenei’s authority, which is that of the Islamic Republic itself, seemed fragile. The revolutionary authorities have always mocked the cancer-ridden Shah ceding before an uprising, and vowed never to bend in the same way. Their firepower remains formidable, but they are facing a swelling test.
Just off Revolution Street, I walked into a pall of tear gas. I’d lit a cigarette minutes before — not a habit but a need — and a young man collapsed into me shouting: “Blow smoke in my face.” Smoke dispels the effects of the gas to some degree.
I did what I could and he said, “We are with you” in English and with my colleague we tumbled into a dead end — Tehran is full of them — running from the searing gas and police. I gasped and fell through a door into an apartment building where somebody had lit a small fire in a dish to relieve the stinging.
There were about 20 of us gathered there, eyes running, hearts racing. A 19-year-old student was nursing his left leg, struck by a militiaman with an electric-shock-delivering baton. “No way we are turning back,” said a friend of his as he massaged that wounded leg.
Later, we moved north, tentatively, watching police lash out from time to time, reaching Victory Square where a pitched battle was in progress. Young men were breaking bricks and stones to the right size for hurling. Crowds gathered on overpasses, filming and cheering the protesters. A car burst into flames. Back and forth the crowd surged, confronted by less-than-convincing police units.
I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, “Islam is the religion of freedom.”
Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, gunfire could be heard in the distance. And from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election. But on Saturday it seemed stronger. The same cry was heard in 1979, only for one form of absolutism to yield to another. Iran has waited long enough to be free.

Moratorium

We're just asking, Mr. President, that you order a moratorium on Don't Ask, Don't Tell... the second largest Clinton folly after Monica.....while the recent appeals court decision is taken back to the courts. Oh yes, we know you want to build consensus and proceed, in the words of your spokesman "in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security" ... and all that jazz. But meanwhile, the law of the land violates the civil rights of some of our most distinguished veterans. Here's number 2 (see Dan Choi, here http://livingimperfectly.blogspot.com/2009/05/dont-ask-dont-tell-dont-keep-it.html) in my humble blog:






Fehrenbach - an American hero. Discharged two years before he earned his full Air Force pension.

You can wait for Congress to stomp around getting the legislation ready, Mr. President. But, while you're waiting, refuse to continue the program of drumming these fine people out of the corps by signing an executive order to cease carrying the program out while the courts and the legislature sort it out. Fulfill this promise.