By Bob Gaydos

Women marched across the nation this month.

I’m big on connecting the dots. A plus B plus C … sometimes it adds up to D. Or in this case, W, as in Women. Here they come, politically. And long overdue.

In this case, making the connections wasn’t too difficult, unless you happen to be someone — a Republican, for example — who is genetically incapable of recognizing the gross disparities, unfairness and outright abuse that continue to confront women in America decades after an Equal Rights Amendment was proposed by Congress and failed to get the required number of states to approve it.

That’s a dot still to be connected, but there are plenty of others falling into place, suggesting a new era is about to burst the male-dominated political/economic bubble that has encased America for, well, ever.

The dots as I see them, in no particular order:

• The Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal that rocked Hollywood, wrecking careers of powerful men throughout the industry.
• The #metoo movement that grew out of the scandal as women in all fields, from TV to Silicon Valley to sports, found the courage to tell their stories of sexual exploitation by men in a position of power.
• Many of those men losing their jobs as a result.
• The Women’s Marches that began last year to protest the election of the misogynist-in-chief and grew this year as millions of women (and men) marched across the country to demand equality for women in the workplace, in politics, in the board room, in society.
• Oprah Winfrey delivering a stirring speech as she accepted an award at the Golden Globes Awards, leading to a social media storm urging her to run for president. (Please, no, we’ve tried the really rich person used to giving orders with no government experience thing. But please do support candidates who agree with you, O. Generously.)
• Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America and former Fox News anchor who won a multi-million-dollar sexual harassment settlement from the network, being named chair of the Miss America pageant board of directors after the male bosses were shown to be mini-Trumps. Former contestants were also added to the board, which was previously all-male.
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, urging Democratic Sen. Al Franken to resign over sexual groping charges, saying Bill Clinton should have stepped down as president because of his sex scandals and urging Donald Trump to resign as president over sexual assault charges from a score of women.
• Trump attacking Gillibrand with sexual innuendo on Twitter and unleashing a powerful backlash.
• The doctor for the U.S. Olympics gymnastic team being sentenced, in effect, to the rest of his life in prison for abusing dozens of female athletes under his medical care for years. The athletes were given all the time they wanted in court by the female judge to tell their stories before the sentencing.
• Women of color turning out en masse at the polls in Alabama to defeat a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who, as a district attorney stalked teen-aged girls at malls. The candidate, Roy Moore, had the support of Trump and the Republican Party. The Democrat won.
• A record number of women, mostly Democrats, running for political office this year at the local, state and national levels.
• Time Magazine choosing “The SILENCE BREAKERS,” the women who came forward with their stories of sexual harassment and assault, launching the #metoo movement, as “Persons of the Year.”
• Hillary Clinton running for president, getting nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, and losing anyway because (1) the Russians interfered with the campaign, (2) Republicans didn’t care and still don’t and (3) she apparently rubbed a lot of women the wrong way.
• Gillibrand, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii joining Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Connecticut as leading voices in the Democratic Party and speaking eloquently about economic equality, health care, gun violence, family leave, veterans, the homeless, abortion, immigration, jobs, the drug crisis — all for the most part ignored by Republicans.
• Steve Wynn, financial chairman of the Republican National Committee, being forced to resign his position over numerous charges of sexual harassment and abuse of women over the years. The wealthy casino magnate is a major financial supporter of Trump and other Republicans.
• Congress rewriting the rules (such as they were) for dealing with members accused of sexual harassment. Secret non-disclosure agreements are probably not going to be the norm anymore.
• Female registered voters outnumbering male registered voters in the United States. They are also more likely to vote than men.

These are the dots. There are plenty more, but you get the idea. This is not simply a revolution about sexual predation — or an attitude of male sexual privilege, if you will. As I see it, it is an awakening, a moment of clarity, a realization that what was does not have to continue to be. Cannot be, in fact. Republicans are mostly clueless to the moment. Democrats ignore it to their continued ineffectuality at the polls.

You want another dot to connect? How about First Lady Melania Trump canceling out at the last moment on the trip to Davos with Donald? No standing stoically by her man. Someone said she sent him a private tweet: Dear POTUS, not going to Davos. Why don’t you see if Stormy Daniels is free for the weekend? Well, not free, but, you know, affordable.

Connect the dots.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Fossil fuels are polluting the planet.

By Patrick Gallagher

Recently, lots of energy has gone into trying to convince universities to withdraw support from the fossil fuel industry. Polluting for profitability is slowly becoming as attractive an investment as apartheid or a slave-based business model.

Student and activist efforts have begun to sway the investor culture we live in while farsighted analysts are beginning to perceive murky futures for securities that rely on profits from smokestacks, pipelines, industrial runoff, groundwater degradation, air pollution and mountaintop removal.

In Silicon Valley, at the heart of 21st century emerging industries, Stanford University has joined 11 other colleges and universities nationwide in removing coal from its investment portfolio.

Foundations, cities and states are recognizing they are made up of people who want to breathe clean air. Seattle, San Francisco and Portland are climbing on board the divestment train, having decided to join the smarter money by divesting of coal and investing elsewhere.

During Hurricane Sandy, many buildings around Wall Street in lower Manhattan could be accessed by pontoon boats via second-floor windows. This winter, the UK experienced otherworldly flooding attributed to carbon-driven climate change.

Worldwide banking customers are persuading their banks to not lend to fossil-fuel producers.

Major financial player Blackrock has teamed with the Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC to create a fossil free stock index. Blackrock is not chartered or known as a green or particularly socially responsible index group, but it is the world’s largest asset manager with $4 trillion (with a T) in assets.

The London Financial Times calls this move a sure signal that the global campaign against fossil fuels is entering the financial mainstream. Strictly business. In fact, options for alternate investments are now easily available with all the data to support wise decisions at hand for review. The fossil-free indices exclude companies that extract or explore for fossil fuels.

It’s an absolute truth that for the moment we all share the sun and that alternatives energies of all stripes are rapidly achieving parity with fossil fuels.  At this point, the first steps towards clean and sustainable energy independence are going to have to come from a sea change in how we subsidize the choices we make.

Divestment is right in front of us. Clean, renewable choices are at our fingertips.

To me it’s very simple.  I will not invest in handing a cup of dirty water to any of the kids in my neighborhood. I don’t wanna and I’m not gunna. If there are two canisters filled with oxygen and one is polluted I want the clean one. If the earth’s atmosphere is the only canister available I want it to be cleaned up.

I’d also like to share it with my neighbors.

If I can eat real food that is not densely laden with hydrocarbons and grown in mercury-rich soil brought to me by coal emissions from neighboring states, I’d just rather have the local healthier stuff, thank you very much.

I ‘m not interested in a dirty atmosphere in my home so I need to act accordingly by withdrawing my implicit financial permission in the form of investments from extractive and pollutive industries.

In taking this approach, we can launch a truly new era of investment and job creation that broadens the opportunities for the generations that will be forced to clean up this mess.

Ask the 300,000 folks in Charleston, West Virginia, if they wanted to divest themselves of the entire cities supply of contaminated drinking water last February and then maybe ask yourself, “What’s in my wallet?”

Patrick Gallagher lives in Warwick.