Katie Brennan: Don’t make your cause political. It hurts victims.
/By Rubashov
Katie Brennan is a long time Democrat Party political operative. She was a staffer with the campaign of Governor Phil Murphy when she made the claim that she was sexually assaulted by another staffer, allegedly a political favorite of the Governor’s spouse.
Katie Brennan tried to have her problem resolved internally. She went to politically appointed prosecutors and they declined to take her case. Finally, she went to the media and her story became front page news.
As Katherine Landergan of Politico notes:
Katie Brennan’s rape allegation against Al Alvarez and the way it was handled by the Murphy administration prompted hours of hearings, policy changes and a broader discussion about how women are treated in Trenton.
It also became a major scandal for the governor’s office.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli is now using the scandal as part of a website and digital ad campaign that was launched Wednesday. Brennan’s testimony in those hearings narrates the ad. And Brennan is not okay with it.
“Survivors are not your props. We are not your political pawns. To use me as such, without my consent, is disrespecting survivors. It is disrespecting women. Take note @Jack4NJ and Diane Allen,” Brennan said on Twitter, with a screenshot of the website.
Hey Katie, this isn’t the time to make this political. You made the allegation. You went public. When you do that, you lose control over who is allowed to comment. You don’t get to vet people who wish to take a position on the subject you raised. You can’t keep it a Democrat Party thing or a women thing or even a victims’ thing. It is now part of a national discussion. Sorry. Didn’t your lawyer tell you this?
Every entity that came forward to focus a light on what happened to you had a motive or could be accused of having a motive. The media uses scandal to put eyes on the page and increase revenue. Politicians, academics, bureaucrats, activists, and non-profits use it to their own advantage too. As in our adversarial legal system, two sides beat each other up to get to the truth. It is the way we move forward. Let it be.
Most of the women New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually abused were politically active Democrats too. Like you, they came forward. And like you, they took crap from other Democrat Party operatives. But right and wrong came before party. The same with Nixon and Watergate. It always should.
Don’t make this about politics. Don’t turn yourself into a prop for the Murphy Democrats. For every woman like you who had the opportunity to exact some measure of justice for what happened to you, there are dozens – maybe hundreds – who worked in the Trenton cesspit (for both parties) whose stories never made the front page. Who were abused and exposed to the world and who had to shut up and take it.
Don’t become a shield to the same two-party establishment power structure that abused you. Don’t get in the way of it tearing itself apart. Forget that party shit because party doesn’t matter. Right and wrong does.
Katie... you are not the only one it happened to. And not only women are victims of sexual abuse.
“The entire business model of the Democratic Party is to avoid dealing with its own populists’ concerns, so they’ve never seen the Sanders wing of the party as anything but a threat to what they do for a living, which is basically take corporate money and then sell themselves as socially progressive. That’s what they do for a living. That’s their business.”
Matt Taibbi
Journalist and author of Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.
