Is his resignation alone enough?
By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
His lieutenants fled. His closest advisers tried to convince him to step aside. And by the time Andrew Cuomo stared down a camera in his Midtown Manhattan office on Tuesday to announce his resignation, only his personal lawyer stood up to defend him. |
In a guest essay, Melissa Gira Grant describes the uniquely toxic work environment Cuomo reportedly fostered during his tumultuous 10 years as governor of New York — and she does it as only she could, with fierce intelligence and eye for the full sweep of history: |
"Working for Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York involved more than just tolerating the casual sexual harassment of a boss who would pretend he saw a spider near your breast so he could brush it away or tell you he needed a girlfriend who could 'handle pain,'" she writes. "The job also meant being enlisted to help silence the women who spoke out." |
As she describes in acute detail, based on the damning report about Cuomo's behavior from the office of New York State's attorney general, Letitia James, the governor harnessed the stories of women who worked for him — many of whom went into politics to combat a culture of sexual violence — to protect himself and his grip on power. |
That revelation is already forcing a reckoning within the #MeToo movement — about how far it has come over the past four years, and how much work is left to do. In some ways, Gira Grant argues, Cuomo's resignation is a victory: He crossed a line and got his due — a fair investigation, a thorough report, and now, the consequences. |
But Cuomo also operated at a nexus of influential lawyers and celebrities, as well as media figures and nonprofits — a network of political and cultural allies that stretched from Hollywood to Albany. He methodically harnessed their power and used it to insulate himself from consequences, framing himself as a champion of women's rights, even as he harassed the women who worked for him, according to James's report. |
In her piece, Gira Grant argues that we are on the brink of a unique moment "in which the momentum driven by activists could be subsumed in a professionalized network of nonprofits, focused on vague 'empowerment' campaigns on the one hand and tougher laws that expand the reach of the criminal punishment system on the other." |
And that has left activists with a timeless yet newly urgent choice — to work within that framework, or to channel their energy in new directions. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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