Women's Voices: The Gender Gap
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
This documentary explores the growing difference in the voting patterns of men and women (the gender gap) that could no longer be denied by the mid-1980's.
Citation
Main credits
Rohrer, Jennifer (Director)
Rohrer, Jennifer (Producer)
Meyer, Nancy (Producer)
Quinn, Gordon (Producer)
Quinn, Gordon (Cinematographer)
Hollander, Nicole (Illustrator)
Crawford, Ron (Animator)
Crawford, Sydney (Animator)
Blumenthal, Jerry (Film editor)
Schanker, Larry (Composer)
Other credits
Cartoonist, Nicole Hollander; animation, Ron Crawford, Sydney Crawford; camera, Gordon Quinn; sound and editing, Jerry Blumenthal; music, Larry Schanker.
Distributor subjects
U.S. History; Family Issues; Social Issues; Politics; Gender Sudies; Film History; Social Studies; DocumentariesKeywords
WEBVTT
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…And all the issues put before them.
However, experts say,
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\"Women care to a greater degree than men about
issues of war and peace, the poor and equality.
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And because of the sheer number of women
voters, politicians have to pay attention to
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whatever differences may exist. Susan, it’s
probably the most frivolous issue of all, but
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how many women or is there any way of knowing how many women
vote for a male candidate because they find him attractive.
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[music]
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The president expressed surprise that
women oppose increased military spending
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and cuts in social services. Wait,
till he finds out we got the vote.
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At one time women voted the way their husbands told him
the vote because their husband was out in the world,
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and they were at home all the time, that’s all they did. Now
more and more women have gone back to work out of necessity,
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not just a desire to go to work.
It’s an absolute need.
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So women are starting to think for themselves. If
you had to describe women’s issues in one word
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as Barbara Mikulski said, it’s economics. How come our
jobs are always worth less than the jobs that men do.
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Ronald Reagan’s cuts affect
the society as a whole
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not just one small segment. And he has hurt,
not only seniors, but he has hurt everybody
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by cutting so many of the social services.
Most of the classes in the school are…
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there are between 35 and 38 students.
They no longer have music.
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They no longer have art. He’s just not
acting on the most important things.
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He’s trying to make more war. I think the
nuclear war could occur in our life,
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if we… if we let… if we don’t try to
prevent it. If we don’t make sure that…
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that we have a president who is against it.
The gender gap, it’s all media hype.
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Women vote the way their husband… In a march
1984, New York Times, CBS poll, less than
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45% of the women polled approved of Reagan’s handling
of the economy, while 62% of the men approved.
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That’s an 18-percent gender gap. Men who
believe in the gender gap eat quiche.
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In an April, 1984, more than
50% of the women polled,
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feared that Reagan’s policy in Central America
might lead to war. But only 40% of the men did.
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That’s an 11% gender gap. Most women don’t
even know where is Central America…
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When asked about how Reagan was handling his job, only
47% of the women polled, felt he was doing a good job
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in contrast to 60% of the men,
that’s the 30% gender gap.
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Women’s issues, that you mean like dieting…
In the 1982 elections, the gender gap was
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responsible for victories in
five major gubernatorial races.
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Six million more women voted than men.
Experts predict that in the 1984 elections,
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8 to 10 million more women than men will vote. Don’t
get me wrong. I’m all for the gender gap. I mean,
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I like a woman who shows a little
gender gap. Whoa! What the… Ah!
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My name is Janet Zofkie. I live in Orland Park.
Uh… My husband and I are both in retail sales.
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He owns a hardware store, and I sell even.
And I have a daughter age 13.
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My even selling started as a supplement
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towards my husband’s income when he opened
a second hardware store. It then gradually
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progressed to something I enjoyed it, now it’s
mandatory. We have to have a supplemental income.
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There’s trickle down, he hasn’t even trickled. I have
no idea where it’s going but it isn’t coming down
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to the middle class. And fairly soon there won’t
be a middle class, there’s going to be in
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a richer and upper class, and a poor class.
The Reagan administration announced today
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that poor people will not get spring
next year, but something almost as good.
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Next, sports and weather.
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Ronald Reagan is definitely not profoundly.
I… I laugh at it because one of the things
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that happened during Ronald Reagan’s administration
was that the programs that help families,
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that kept families together will cut out first. If it had
not been for those same programs on my head start programs,
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I could not look back and my
professional degree. And even though
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to a certain extent, you might wanna
say \"I pulled up by my own bootstraps.
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The bootstraps that I pulled up by were those of
somebody else being supportive enough, and saying,
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\"Here, I’m gonna give you a chance. I opened the doors,
now it’s up to you to take the opportunity to use them.\"
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I say to Ronald Reagan, \"Open up some more
doors. Allow some other people to find out
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what it is to get out there and have the
opportunity to go back to school, to work at it,
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and then, they too can be continued
to pull above their bootstraps.
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I don’t see Reagan helping us in anyway.
When he cut this, umm…
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scholarships and everything, he took their money
to put it in defense. Because all was… all these…
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all these bombs being made and everything are really necessary.
We already have enough bombs to blow over the world.
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I don’t know how many times, and there’s not
enough money for everybody to go to school.
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And then they’re taking money not only
from education that we intend on getting,
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but social security and other… other things around the
country, when you’re supposed to sit back and say, \"Okay,
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take my money and make a bomb to help
kill me?\" I mean, it just is ironic.
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In a way people really shouldn’t complain because in
his campaign speeches before he became president,
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he let people know, exactly where he stood.
He… he say he wasn’t for EI.
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He said that he likes bomb. Today in
keeping with the president’s belief
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that he show of military strength will bring
the Soviets back to the negotiating table,
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we bomb Leningrad. \"It’s okay,\" a White House spokesman
said, \"It was just a small bomb,\" filmed at 11.
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A lot of these talks that are taking place
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somebody gets mad and walks out, it
reminds me of a couple of kids playing,
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\"And you don’t play the game my way, I’m gonna take my ball
and go home.\" And these are supposed to be world leaders.
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All of us want a strong
defense, but we also want to
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have the morale of our people be strong.
We want to have an economy
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that’s strong in the private sector. And we certainly
want our institutions or educational institutions
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strong because if we don’t… if we
decay from within, we are certainly,
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uh… not going to be a secure nation. The
democrat society, you’re not alone.
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You have to share things with other people, and you
have to learn how to share, and how to be considerate,
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and how to think not only for
yourself, but for someone else and
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for someone else’s children and for someone
else’s grandchildren. My husband and I voted for
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Reagan in ‘80, but we will
not vote for him in ‘84.
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We lost our farm because of his policies,
but we are trying to regain it.
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In September of ‘81, we got a
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letter from the county supervisor. He
wrote the nation and the government has a
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new president and our agency a new administration.
They have a different attitude toward
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past due and delinquent loans. They expect
us to collect what is due the government and
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not be the last ones to be paid,
which is not what the… the, uh…
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program was set up to do which was
set up to help the family farm,
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but Reagan’s farm policy helps
corporate farming, big business.
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And I’m a dissatisfied Republican
I guess you would say.
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When I grew up, whenever we came close to the
smell, I knew I was home. Everybody did.
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The problem is we have 31 waste disposal
sites already. And now they proposed to
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289 acre land of our
community, right here on 110.
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When we have the residential area
on 109, we have the school on 107.
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And I’m raising my children here. I
don’t want them to grow up and have
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some kind of incurable disease because
of the environment in which they live.
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You have some of the biggest companies out here.
They come in and make all kinds of money and leave,
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and I’d have to worry about cleaning it up. Our president
doesn’t consider. Uh… This a real major problem,
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but they’ve been beat before, and they’re
gonna be beat again by us. We’re gonna do it.
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The whole part of the government, the bags that they’re
supposed to protect our rights whether it’s women or…
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or workers or minorities is just falling apart.
That’s like an option we don’t have any more,
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going to the labor board,
going to EEOC. Right.
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So where do we go. We’re not going to the labor board. We’re not
going to Supreme Court. I mean as far as the company is a concern,
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Reagan is saying get away with as much as you
can, go as far as you can, we’ll back you.
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So it’s left up to the union
persons to do the own fighting.
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Under Reagan, back pay awards to women and
minorities were down 94%, and Reagan’s
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EEOC filed 60% fewer lawsuits for
discrimination than the Carter Administration.
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Hey, equal rights for women is unnatural.
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What is natural is men
wanting to protect women.
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Yeah, from earning too much money.
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Over 50% of American women are in the
workforce, and they’re there out of necessity
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not by choice or not there
because of some grand career,
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they’re out there because
money is survival.
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Hey, Syl? I read an article that said in the
future, men could actually bear children.
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I saw that. You know,
there’d be a lot of changes
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that men could have children. Oh yeah,
daycare centers would spring up overnight.
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A lot of homes now, the
woman is the breadwinner
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because the man cannot find a job. And they have enough
nerve to say in the news, employ… unemployment’s
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down to 7.5, that means so many
people found jabs. That’s not true,
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that just means their compensation ran out.
We have people calling the union office
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and the chief Stewards office like every day in
tears. Because they haven’t been called back,
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their unemployment’s run out, they can’t
get public aid. It’s just horrible.
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We had 2,800 people in 1979. We’ve got
1,800. Now tell me, 1,000 people,
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you know, almost a half of, uh… of the plant
gone somewhere, and that’s an economic recovery.
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It’s like 1984 doublespeak, you
point somebody who hates trees
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to the head of the environment, and somebody who hates
workers to the head of the, you know, Department of Labor.
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Do you believe in reverse discrimination?
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No, I believe in the Easter bunny.
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Well, in 1980, the Republican Party, my
party who… that all of us believed in
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the principles of choice and individual
rights decided in the Republican platform
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that they would renege on a 40 year
commitment, to the Equal Rights Amendment
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and asked for a constitutional amendment banning
abortion. And I just stood up in publicly,
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denounced that platform.
I felt that my party
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had an internal sickness, and was about
to bury the rights of 100 million
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American women under a heap of platitudes. And in fact,
that’s what they’ve been trying to do for 3.5 years.
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A White House spokesman said today
that just because the president
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removed three members of the Commission on civil
rights, doesn’t mean he’s against civil rights.
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He just has an image problem with civil
rights. Right, he can’t stand to see him.
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I knew Reagan from before, I know
what he was when he was governor,
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and I would have suspected that he would
do anything for the rich against the poor.
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[sil.]
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I’m getting old in America,
by Sylvia, page one.
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Best to do it somewhere else.
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My mother is paying an exorbitant
rate on supplemental insurance
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because Medicare is covering next to nothing
these days. Their biggest fear is that
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one of them will become desperately ill,
and it’s gonna wipe them out financially.
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My husband’s hospital bill was $25,896.97.
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Medicare paid $22,200.
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So I had, I’m still paying the balance.
I don’t feel that I should have to take
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my social security and my husband’s social
security to meet the bare necessities of life.
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And young people are frightened because they think
there’s not gonna be any social security or Medicare.
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Spray and wash gets out
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what America gets into.
Send some gel Salvador.
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I don’t think in Central America the
administration is really dealing
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with the… the social and economic
issues of the people there.
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They seem to have a one-track mind. They want to spend
so much on building bomb, bigger and better bombs.
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It takes a lot more people to build
a hospital or to repair the roads
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than it does to build a missile. And then, they finish
the missile, they stick it in the silo somewhere,
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and hopefully, they’ll never use it.
They only use it once. Right.
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If the women’s vote has a strong
part in any part of the selection,
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it’s gonna make a lot of men, and a lot of politicians
sit up and realize that we’re here to stay.
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We’ve always been here. They just
have never acknowledged at all,
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but at least they’re gonna realize that we are here, and we’ve
got a voice and we’ve got a mind and we’re gonna use it.
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In Mississippi, you did not have the privilege
to vote, if you lived on a plantation
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or if you lived on the
farm, uh… the land owner
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voted for everybody. So I
left Mississippi in 1957 and
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came to Chicago, and that was the first
thing I did is registered to vote.
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I didn’t vote. I really thought it
wasn’t gonna make. Well, first of all,
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I didn’t think Reagan was gonna get in. I
thought, umm… Carter would probably win again.
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I didn’t think it was gonna make much difference one way
other, and I just didn’t vote. And uh… I’ll tell you this,
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I’m definitely gonna vote this time. Your
vote is your… is your way of saying,
00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:14.999
\"This is how I want things to go.\" And everybody has their
chance to talk, and your vote is just your chance to talk.
00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:19.999
What I like about Reagan’s that he stepped
on everybody’s toes, he’s really a equal
00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:24.999
opportunity president when it comes to…
Right, when it comes to abusing people.
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He hurt us in the way that he’s putting
us down, he’s putting us down, and to me,
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for anybody to put me down, you have to fight me to
put me down. ‘Cause I’m not just gonna let you say,
00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:39.999
\"Well, you’re nobody. ‘Cause I’m gonna tell you, I’m somebody.
And I’m gonna try to knock you down before you knock me down.\"
00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:44.999
And how are you gonna do that? Well, let me try to get him
out office, number one. How are you gonna do that? Vote.
00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:49.999
And tell all your friends to vote. Please
do vote. Right. And tell her friends to…
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And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on…
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Okay, I’m going to vote.