Freedom from Fear

Last night, I had the pleasure of moderating Freedom from Fear: A Candidates’ Forum on Crimes Against Women. This arose from the Montgomery County Domestic Violence Task Force and an effort among several groups to invite several candidates to address issues of domestic abuse, sexual assault and elder exploitation. I was the organizing chair, and we pulled it off with no money expended and about 6 weeks of preparation. It’s awfully nice to have a university’s worth of resources and personnel to rally for something like this.

Here is the newspaper account from today.

I was struck by the miraculous beauty of our system and culture where a group of people committed to a cause can call our candidates to appear and answer our questions, and the candidates and incumbents will and must respond. This is the great beauty of our self-governance, that we can call our representatives and judges to answer to us, and if they don’t, we fire them.

I’m awfully proud and patriotic today and can’t wait for a debate tonight.