Category Archives: Politics

Abortion war of words

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Regarding “No faith in court ruling” (San Francisco Chronicle Open Forum, May 8): The opinion piece on the leaked Roe v. Wade ruling argues that a fetus is not the same as a human life, and that when a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life, it must be terminated.

The piece was an inadvertent reminder to me of how the pro-abortion movement has lost the word “life” to anti-abortionists. We need to take it back.

An abortion is not just about controlling our own bodies, it’s about protecting the physical, emotional and intellectual life of the mother. The one too young to raise a child alone. The one raped by an abuser. The one who can’t afford a bigger family.

The one who might die from delivery: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 700 pregnancy-related deaths happen each year in the U.S. The maternal mortality rate for 2020 was nearly 24 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Messaging matters. The pro-abortionists language of controlling our own bodies is logical, but it doesn’t resonate against the near-magic of the language of pro-life. Abortion supporters are pro-life, too: the life of the woman.

Susan Gluss, Berkeley

My letter appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on 5/23/2022

It’s no secret: How Weapons Fuel America’s Mass Shootings

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This article first appeared on the UC Berkeley Law School website on 8/13/2019

Mental illness. Video games. The Internet. These are excuses offered by the U.S. President and his supporters for a scourge of mass killings. But five decades of empirical research by preeminent criminal law expert Professor Franklin Zimring tell a different story: The core of our country’s deadly violence is access to weaponry.

An estimated three-hundred million guns are cached throughout America’s households: handguns, rifles, assault weapons. The idea that “guns don’t kill people—people kill people,” promoted by gun advocates, skirts the issue.

“Does the availability of guns increase the death rate from assault? Of course, it does,” Zimring said. “Trying to reduce death totals without discussing guns” belies logic and “ignores risks to public health.” 

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Struggle for Americans to get health care is a national disgrace

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This article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26, 2019

The terrain darkened as I drove the rural back roads of Georgia, red clay lining the sandy soil, deep-green kudzu choking trees and climbing telephone poles; the highway transformed into bumpy roads wearing worn-out street signs. It was summer 1985, and I was driving to see Mamie, a part-time nanny who’d helped raise me as a child. I barely knew about her own life back then, only that she lived across town, a single mom with a teenage son. I hadn’t seen her for decades.

I was now a 30-something TV reporter in Atlanta. I’d just finished a report about the “sandwich generation” — adults squeezed between caring for their children and their elderly parents — when my mom called. Mamie, she said, had moved to Georgia to care for her ailing mother.

Little did I know then that Mamie’s mother was one of 37 million Americans without health care. The idea of universal coverage wouldn’t surface until a decade later — a Clinton effort that tanked. It took another two decades before Obama signed his signature Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — into law.

Mamie was family. So, on a hot, humid Sunday, I drove west, vintage jazz on the radio. I turned off the interstate and stopped at a dilapidated roadside store. The torn screen door banged shut behind me, as ceiling fans blew a wisp of warm, muggy, air. I grabbed a bottle of cold water and asked folks standing online for directions.

After an awkward silence, a middle-aged white woman in a baggy T-shirt and faded jeans spoke up: “Y’all must be going to the black side of town.” She waved in the general direction.

As I walked out, my naiveté hit me hard. I’d grown accustomed to Atlanta politics, where most power brokers were African American: the police chief; City Council members, including civil rights legend and future Congressman John Lewis; and Mayor Andrew Young. But in the outskirts, the racial split of old emerged.

I started the car’s tired engine and drove down a dusty road flanked by sagging homes, overgrown weeds, and a spray of pines.

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A rebuke of Ed Whelan: What goes around comes around

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Kudos to columnist E.J. Dionne (The ugly attacks on Christine Blasey Ford…) for chastising legal scholar Ed Whelan, who tried to pin Judge Kavanaugh’s alleged boorish behavior on an innocent man.

I watched Whelan’s shenanigans first-hand when he targeted then-UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu. Liu –widely admired for his decency, open-mindedness and intellect—was nominated by President Obama in 2010 to serve on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But Whelan staged a full-frontal attack against Liu’s legal acumen. It was political hucksterism at its finest under the guise of conservative values.

The blatant misinformation campaign prompted Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, to rebuke it. Painter described Liu as a man guided by integrity rather than political expediency … a moderate liberal … open to ideas championed by libertarians and conservatives.

Painter—an eyewitness to the confirmation fights over Justices Roberts and Alito—was keenly aware of the politics behind the Liu attacks:

Indeed, much of this may have nothing to do with Liu but rather with politicians and interest groups jostling for position in the impending battle over the president’s next nominee to the Supreme Court, Painter wrote.

It was a prescient comment. Obama’s last nominee to the Supreme Court – Judge Merrick Garland – never even got a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Liu eventually withdrew his name from consideration. Nevertheless, in a masterful stroke, Gov. Brown snagged him for California’s Supreme Court in 2011. Justice Liu is now a highly respected jurist, akin to the court’s one-time intellectual powerhouse Justice Roger Traynor.

Fast forward as conservative Republicans jockey to get Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court—no matter the cost to his accusers – or the country. It has nothing to do with moral values and everything to do with political calculus. And Whelan is a willing conspiracist.

US Immigrants: Living in the Shadows

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A longer version of this article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 12, 2018, entitled: Despite what you might think, there is no ‘good-guy’ visa.

Meet Antonio, a loving husband and father of three. A skilled furniture-maker and the sole provider for his family. In his 19 years in California, he’s put down roots, worked hard, and paid his taxes like any U.S. resident. But Antonio is undocumented.

Antonio (who doesn’t want to use his last name) came here to raise a family without fear of extortion or violence in his home town near Coyoacán, Mexico. He says it’s worse there now, rife with gangs, corruption and crime. No one is safe, he says; people feel threatened — even by the authorities.

But now Antonio lives in fear here in the U.S. One night in 2013, driving home late from work, Antonio was charged with reckless driving. It was his first and only offense. It was a minor infraction but has changed his life.

The U.S. government has been trying to deport him ever since. He just lost his asylum case before an immigration judge in San Francisco. He’s appealing the ruling, but his chances are slim to none.

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Citizens’ Rights at Risk During Wartime

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By Susan Gluss

In her new book, Habeas Corpus in Wartime, Professor Amanda Tyler offers a searing look at episodes in U.S. history when the federal government undermined its citizens’ legal rights during times of war.

Tyler focuses on the constitutional protection against unlawful imprisonment, or the writ of habeas corpus—and the government’s power to suspend it during conflicts. Her critique reveals an incremental breakdown of habeas corpus, starting with the American Revolution and continuing through the war on terror.

Taking sharp aim at the most egregious instance of illegal detention, the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II, Tyler questions the extent of executive power that enabled that chapter in U.S. history.

Read the full story here, first posted on the UC Berkeley Law website on 10/23/17.

Living on the nuclear edge

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Read the full op-ed, Savoring life on earth – while I keep my nuclear survival kit ready, published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Oct. 9, 2017.

by Susan Gluss

As president Trump belittles “rocket man” and imperils the nuclear agreement with Iran, I can’t help but think about the end of life as we know it. Literally.

I’m not the only one who’s skittish. The Nobel Peace Prize was just awarded to a group that wants to ban nuclear weapons — a welcome warning.

Ever the pragmatist, I’ve started stockpiling water. I’ve stored a survival kit by the front door with a checklist of items: dried food, a first aid kit and sneakers. Happily, this works as an earthquake stash, too, which reassures me no end.

As I skirt fear of an apocalypse — it brings into sharp relief a conundrum that’s haunted me for years: What is our life’s purpose?

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November election is crucial for women

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Young, college-aged, women, are you feeling the Bern? If so, this one’s for you. I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. Please hear me out. It’s important that women get this.

I’m not voting for Clinton because it’s her time. I’m not voting for her because it’s a historic first for a woman to be president.

I’m voting for her because women’s rights are getting trampled. And she will be our fiercest protector. We need her.

Why? Do you realize that women don’t have equal rights under the U.S. Constitution? The battle for an Equal Rights Amendment failed just short of ratification over three decades ago. This translates into lower pay, workplace discrimination and — taken to its extreme — sexual slavery.

Every battle you face — and you will face them — will be that much tougher because of your gender. You do not have the same rights as men under the law.

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Lawsuit Filed Against U.S. for Human Rights Abuses

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The International Human Rights Law Clinic filed a petition against the United States for the death of a Mexican national by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The complaint, filed with co-counsel Alliance San Diego before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, calls for an investigation into the killing and a condemnation of U.S. actions.

The deceased, Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, died on May 31, 2010, a few days after border agents took him into custody. The father of five was caught trying to cross the Mexican-U.S. border to rejoin his family in San Diego. He’d been deported just weeks earlier, despite having lived and worked in the U.S. for more than two decades.

CBP agents transported Anastasio to a deportation gate, and it’s there that the brutal beating ensued. As Anastasio objected to his detention, a dozen or more border agents punched, kicked, dragged, Tased, hogtied, and denied him medical attention, according to the petition.

Immobilized on the ground, Anastasio cried out for help in Spanish. His cries drew the attention of witnesses standing on a nearby pedestrian bridge, and several onlookers recorded cell phone footage. Border agents sought to confiscate any evidence—but two eye-witnesses hid their phones and eventually released videos of the beating. Broadcast on U.S. news networks, the videos led to a public outcry and heightened scrutiny of the case.

Read the full story on the UC Berkeley Law School website.

Join the Justice for Anastasio movement here.

Trump reveals Republican Party’s true views on abortion

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Read the full op-ed published by the San Francisco Chronicle on April 6, 2016.

by: Susan Gluss

Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party. It’s not just that he’s ruining their chances to win the presidency. It’s also that he has exposed the party’s hypocrisy on abortion.

When Trump said women should receive “some form of punishment” for getting an abortion if the procedure was banned, conservatives were quick to denounce his comments. Ditto the right-to-life advocates.

But Trump’s comment reveals the truth about the Republican Party’s antiabortion juggernaut.

Laws in 38 states now allow a person to be charged with homicide if she or he is deemed responsible for the unlawful death of a fetus, according to a Guttmacher Institute report by analyst Andrea Rowan released last fall.

Not all of these laws clearly exempt the pregnant woman herself from being charged, writes Rowan. “These laws are even being used to pursue women who are merely suspected of having self-induced an abortion, but in fact had suffered miscarriages.”

In Indiana, a young woman named Purvi Patel is now serving 20 years of a 46-year prison sentence — the first woman to be convicted under Indiana’s feticide law for ending her own pregnancy.

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India Fails Female Victims of Sex Crimes

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In India, female victims of sexual violence during social unrest have little chance of retribution. Authors of a new report found that most politicians, judges, police officers, and state officials sabotage women seeking justice. Access to Justice for Women: India’s Response to Sexual Violence in Conflict and Social Upheaval looks at India’s failed responses to these women and calls for legal reforms.

The underlying causes of conflict in areas of India are complex, but stem in part from the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. That split exacerbated conflicts between Hindu and Muslim communities—and inflamed deeply rooted cultural and political tensions.

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