Mary Lehmann, Activist & Stylish Bicyclist--Austin

Mary Lehmann in front of the retail area in the new redevelpment site of Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. "Does this (the new development) look like keep Austin weird", she asked.

I had to admit it didn't.

(I first saw Mary Lehmann bicycling on a cold day on her way to a forum on the environment. Instead of latex, she wore a tweed skirt suit as she biked, and she looked very stylish. I was filled with admiration, and I decided that I had to know more about her, so I asked to interview her. The following interview was conducted through email over several months.)

LMK: You cut a fashionable figure. I admire the tweeds! Is it difficult to bicycle in a skirt or dress?

Mary Lehmann: Not at all, and my bike is a boy's bike with a horizontal bar. When I wore a long dress of light material, I would grab up the loose part in my right hand holding the handle bar, and mostly steer with my left. But I seldom wear long dresses anymore.

LMK: How old are you?

Mary Lehmann: In March, I turned 83.

LMK: How often do you use your bicycle? Do you bicycle when it rains?

Mary Lehmann: Since I've cut down on the meetings I go to, I use the bike less. I used it plenty some years ago to get to LCRA to argue the case before the City Council for leasing the 700 acres of the old Mueller airport. More recently I biked to the Travis County headquarters a lot in the Obama campaign, but starting using the bus to get home. Thank goodness the buses carry bikes.

I rarely start out in the rain, but usually keep going if it's not a downpour that overtakes me.

LMK: When did you start commuting regularly on bicycle and why?

Mary Lehmann: I haven't owned a car since my children were small when I had to drive them a lot of places. When I didn't have to do that I quit.

I started using a bike and bus more, and when St. Louis, where I lived, put in the Metrolink, that was a help. Since I came to Austin over ten years ago, I first went around only on my bike, but as the years went by I began to combine it with bus travel.

Why do I use a bike? Not for exercise, though that's a good idea, and I'm in a better mood than when behind a steering wheel. Mainly, I've been a believer for years that relying on cars is a wrong direction. They have become a bad idea for our health and our surroundings, and I feel a little guilty when I have occasion to drive. (Like for moving a 'cello --but I have started taking it on the bus.).

And now cutting edge data say we won't be able to keep up our heavy dependence on the car --not enough available energy very soon, fossil or alternative.

Not one person who has complimented me for my bide-riding has changed to doing it instead of using a car. A lot more has to change about the way we live before that happens.

LMK: Are you an environmental activist? Would you describe yourself that way...or is there another term you prefer to use?

Mary Lehmann: To give a short answer to your question, I'm an ex-activist on the matter of promoting wise taxation, and a would-be activist if someone could find a way to get people thinking about our numbers as well as our consumption habits

At first I was appalled at how little people understood that land as a source of revenue is far better that if wages and buildings are taxed, because the wrong people, who supply labor and human effort, are paying for the city's costs, not the owners of land who with no effort rake in rent on a necessity nature provides. I watched in disbelief as the City Council readily gave up city ownership of Mueller airport acreage without professional appraisal and with lots of interest free perks for the developer, and then I saw the result for shoppers, not the promised walkable neighborhoods, but a huge parking lot ringed by chain stores. When the city lost ownership it lost a great source of revenue and control of the land use.

Beyond laying before the City Council the case for keeping ownership of Mueller, I was not an activist. The influence of developers on the city government was too deep and unperceived by the ordinary citizen.

When the environmental crisis we are now in became pretty public, I thought Obama must win, so I worked on his campaign in four states and seven cities, and perceived alas, that right now he and the public are hoping to bring our consumption to what it was before. That's "the American Dream".

When canvassing for Obama, I discovered that biking, as least on reasonably level ground, was a lot less effort than walking (which requires carrying one's own weight), but my bike was at home in Austin, alas.

This time I guess you could say I'm at last an activist, or a would-be one if I could figure out some strategy that focuses on environmental impact, the per person consumption times the number of persons. I quickly discovered you can't talk about the number of persons, which makes reducing the per capita consumption meaningless. A doubled population by 2030 would wipe out any consumption reduction. There are some smart, perceptive people in Austin who want Austin to change direction to a shrinking economy before Nature does it for us, and one is our re-elected Bill Spelman. So one can't entirely write Austin off as an oblivious, happy-go-lucky college town.

Broadband For Whom and For What? Few Women & Non-White Presenters At Telecommunication Events in Austin

Why are there so few female and non-white presenters at events that supposedly seek public input or more equality?

Look, it’s not enough to have one woman and/or one non-white presenter at a public meeting soliciting or representing diversity or net neutrality. This is tokenism. It’s a big responsibility for one woman or one non-white to represent all women and/or non-whites. Yet, conference organizers appear to believe that if one woman and/or one non-white presenter is included, that they are not racist, sexist, or ageist.

Late in September, I attended two events concerning telecommunication access. One event was the Federal Communications Council, (FCC) public field hearing in Austin, TX on the topic of spectrum. The second event was OneWebDay.

At each event, there was only one female presenter. The other presenters were male, mostly white. There was only one non-white male presenter at each event. This is despite evidence indicating that more women report using the Internet than men, and that growing numbers of African Americans and English-speaking Hispanics are accessing the Internet via handheld devices.

This leads me to ask, broadband access for whom and for what?

First, I will talk about the FCC public field hearing.

I attended the FCC field hearing online, because I couldn’t find information about where to park without being towed or ticketed if I attended in person. The public hearing appeared to have been scheduled at the last moment. The Free Press reported that the FCC notified the public only a few days before the field hearings, and that the hearings are held during the weekdays while many people are working,, which made it difficult for the public to participate in person. The FCC has said that it will give more advance notice in the future.

The allocation and use of spectrum sparked lots of discussion at the FCC field hearing in Austin. Goggle and Microsoft, among others want to use unused frequencies as well as the frequencies between television channels to beam wireless Internet access. These frequencies are called “white space”.

"White"space --Is the space actually the color white? Why isn't the space called blank, black, red, brown, or purple space?

Meredith Attwell Baker, the FCC presiding commissioner at the hearing is a white female Republican ex-lobbyist with family and personal ties to Texas. She is also one of two women among five FCC commissioners.

Besides Ms. Baker, there was one woman on the panel. She was DeAnne Cuellar, a Latina from San Antonio, representing the Texas Media Empowerment Program. Ms. Cuellar, said that many Hispanic seniors were unaware of the fact that they would have to obtain special conversion boxes to continue using their present television sets, due to television broadcasters switching from analog to digital signals for television reception. She and her staff spent many hours educating the community about the changes and about the importance of applying for a coupon, sponsored by the federal government, to pay for the conversion boxes. Ms. Cuellar, expressed hope that any changes regarding the spectrum, the use of electromagnetic frequencies for transmitting information or data, take all users into consideration not just corporate users.


Next, I want to talk about The OneWebDay event in Austin. I asked Jon Lebkowsky, who helped organize the event, why there were no female presenters listed on the schedule. He said that no women had responded to a call for speakers, but that he was including one woman, Julie Gomoll, as a co-presenter in his segment. Ms. Gomoll,is the CEO of Launchpad Co-Working, co-founder of Austin Free-Net, and a past director of Excite, who talked about her experiences at Excite in attracting “sticky eyeballs” or viewers. She said that everything used to be for free on the Internet, because no one could figure out how to make money on it. Now, she says, there are different levels of access. Some are free, but access to more specialized information is generally fee-based.

The talk turned to storage and net neutrality. What is net neutrality? According to SaveTheInternet.com on Wikopedia, net neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination. This means that an internet service provider (ISP) cannot block a service that may compete with its own.

The last presenter at OneWebDay in Austin was Carl Settles Jr., the founder and director of the Media Diversity Council. He believes in media diversity, and to that end he is empowering young people of diverse races and backgrounds to work in media and to have media careers. He also is raising consciousness among media businesses about the need to have diversity in their workforces.

More women and non-whites and other non-represented communities need to be at the table presenting information about how they use the internet and telecommunications. There are many women and non-whites here in Austin who have opinions and experience with the Internet and media and telecommunication issues, but we need to become more visible and talk about our opinions and experiences.

Recycling @ Goodwill Computer Works—Austin

Recently, a few acquaintances from Herdomain,a women's listserv, and I went to Austin Goodwill Computer Works to learn more about computer recycling. Goodwill Computer Works not only sells used computers and computer parts, but it also offers workshops and tours on computer recycling. You too, can learn about computer recycling and tour the Computer Museum.


Mark, The Manager of The Goodwill Computer Center Gave Us A Tour

Mark the manager of Austin Goodwill Computer Works and Courtney, an AmeriCorps member at Goodwill led us on a tour of the recycling areas and the Computer Museum, and Harry helped us learn to take apart computers for recycling. By the way, Mark says that the Computer Museum is in need of volunteers to lead tours.


Thank Goodness for Harry Who Showed Us Some Tricks About Taking Apart The Computers


Courtney, An AmeriCorps Volunteer, Cheered Us On With Her Can-Do Spirit

There is money in recycling computers. Well-functioning computers can be resold, and the non-functioning ones can be taken out and resold either as scrap or as parts. Mark said that 80 % of the computers that Goodwill receives are recycled as parts and scrap, and that they sell 20% (the ones that work well)through the Goodwill Computer Works store.

I was inspired to learn about computer recycling, by Las Chicas Bravas.
Las Chicas Bravas is a Mexican women’s electronics recycling cooperative. The women, in their 40s and 50, formed an electronics recycling cooperative to make money for themselves and their families. The town’s only industry had left seven years before. Despite their skills and experience, the leader of the cooperative said that the women probably would not be able to get jobs in another company if one moved in, because of a long tradition in Mexico of age discrimination against older female workers. That’s why the women started the cooperative.

I am unaware of any similar cooperatives for older women in the US, but given the current high level of unemployment in the US, I think that it would be good for some of us to think about work or skill cooperatives. It doesn't have to be an electronics or computer recycling cooperative. It could be a cooperative of artists, writers, or software designers.

Below are some photos of us taking apart computes at Austin Goodwill Computer Works.

Obama Health Bill Rally—Austin

On Saturday, July 25, about 475 people, mostly white and over 50-years-old, rallied at the AFL-CIO auditorium in downtown Austin, to support the public option in Obama’s health plan, now being debated in Congress. Speakers included Austin Mayor, Lee Leffingwell and US Representative Lloyd Doggett.

The auditorium was so jammed that the overflow crowd spilled out into the hallway and the parking lot. Several people at the rally held signs supporting health care changes. Across the street about 250 protesters, again mostly white and over 50, held signs, claiming that President Obama, is a socialist, Marxist, etc,and that they didn’t want socialized medicine. One of the groups protesting the public option at the rally was, Americans For Prosperity, (AFP). AFP also has advocated pro-tobacco industry positions against cigarette taxes and bans to end smoking indoors.(The last I heard, smoking is considered very unhealthy.)

Is history repeating itself? In 1994, the Philip Morris company lobbied heavily against Clinton’s health care plan.

The following are some photos I took at the rally--The first two are people holding signs of support for the rally. The last two are photos of conversations between individuals supporting the rally and those opposed to it.






I followed an older woman with a cane across the street. She offered bottled water to this woman in orange, holding a sign against the public option. She asked her why she was protesting against the health care changes. The woman in orange said that she didn’t want socialized medicine. When the older woman said that Medicare was basically socialized medicine, the woman in orange, said that there was too much fraud in Medicare. She didn’t think that it should be expanded. However there is also fraud in the private health insurance industry.



Another conversation about health care coverage occurred between this woman in red and a woman in a wheelchair. I overheard the woman in the wheelchair ask, “Do you think the health insurance companies should get all the money?”

According to a Bill Moyer's interview with Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive, the health insurance companies are putting profits ahead of those they insure or don’t insure.

Texas Senators Rake in Contributions From “Health” Industry While Opposing Government Public Health Care Option

Do y’all remember the rallies held to bail out the banks? No? Me neither, but it didn’t take long for the US Congress to bail them out, even when there were public rallies against doing so.

What about the rallies to bail out the pharmaceutical, hospital, and health insurance industries? Wait a minute –there have not been any public rallies for them—just the opposite, public rallies and public surveys supporting government-operated health care. Yet, no legislation has been passed for that, even though many people are struggling with health care expenses and lack of health care.

In the Austin area, only one person representing us in Washington DC, US Representative, Lloyd Doggett, the lone Democrat, supports a government option in health care. The others, all Republicans don’t.

However, all including Representative Doggett have accepted contributions from the health care industry for their political campaigns. US Texas Senators Cornyn and Hutchinson have received the most contributions and appear to be the most vehement against a federal government public option.

The following table shows how much money health professionals donated to each of our local federal representatives and Texas senators since 2005.

*Information compiled from opensecrets.org—Does not include data on contributions from illegal drug activity.

Mr. Cornyn has received the most contributions from the health care industry. He is against a federally legislated public option along with Mrs. Hutchinson, who has announced that she is running for Governor of Texas in 2010.

Large Support For US Government-Supported Health Insurance

President Barack Obama wants to offer a public insurance option on the health care plan that he is promoting. This is not the same as the single-payer health insurance program, which currently is in Congress under U.S. House Resolution (HR) 676.

In Mr. Obama’s quest to promote his health care plan, he is asking people to share their stories about health care. There are a number of stories from Austin, including the following—

“I am in the most uninsured demographic in the United States - young adults. I'm currently working on a Master's degree and am getting married in three weeks. Instead of being as excited as I should be, I worry endlessly about being tossed off of my parents' insurance plan and into the world of uncertainty and fear that is being uninsured. Neither my husband-to-be nor I are able to hold full-time jobs that offer health benefits because we are both graduate students. We make ends meet through part-time and odd jobs, but there is not enough at the end of the month to pay for a $300 health insurance bill. Thus, we remain uninsured. We are left to worry that something will happen to one of us and we will not be able to pay medical bills we might incur. We would go further into debt, in addition to all of our student loans. Just the other day, my fiance had an accident with a knife in the kitchen and he suffered a puncture wound in his hand. The first thing that went through both of our minds was, "Oh no, we can't go to the hospital; he doesn't have health insurance." We both live in constant fear of what might happen. In a few weeks, I won't be able to afford the allergy and asthma medication that has allowed me to live in the central Texas area, which has the highest pollen and allergen count in the U.S. My fiance will worry about what we could cut from our meager monthly budget so that we could afford even a basic health care plan just for me. Both my fiance and I are in desperate need of healthcare reform that will take the burden of health care off of employers and will make healthcare more affordable to individuals like us who are trying to better ourselves through education and who can't yet find jobs that will afford them benefits. If fear of "socialism" and ideological differences is holding back those in power, I beg each of them to please consider each personal story they hear as if they were hearing it from their own son or daughter.” Shawn, Austin, TX


The governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, commented about the relationship between health insurance and the auto industry. “…we have a saying that the auto companies are really health care companies who make cars to pay for it.”

Governor Granholm said that the US auto industry, which has had to supply its own health insurance, competes with auto industries in other countries such as Canada that have national health insurance. She noted that for the first time, last year before the economic meltdown, more cars were built in Ontario, Canada than in Michigan.


A recent poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS showed wide-support for government-run health care, although this does not necessarily mean that those polled support only single-payer health insurance.

Wikipedia had this to say about the current U.S.health care system. ...“the U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world on both a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP.[30] Despite this expenditure, the current U.S. system fails to provide universal coverage. More than 45 million Americans, about 15 percent of the population, lacked health insurance in 2007.[31] The lack of universal coverage contributes to another flaw in the current U.S. health care system: on most dimensions of performance, it under performs relative to other industrialized countries.[16] In a 2007 comparison by the Commonwealth Fund of health care in the U.S. with that of Germany, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the U.S. ranked last on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes.[16]”


A recent article in the New Yorker concerning Medicare cost discrepancies in two Texas-Mexico border cities, McAllen and El Paso adds fuel to the debate about government-operated health insurance Medicare expenditures were twice as high in McAllen than El Paso, because McAllen doctors increased their incomes by over-treating their patients.


Meanwhile, back in Austin, on Saturday, May 30, about 150 people—mostly white and over 50-years old, participated in or attended a single-payer health insurance rally at City Hall in Austin, TX. The rally was one of many held on the same day across the US to raise consciousness and support for U.S. House Resolution (HR) 676.

As of this writing, the Austin City Council appears to be the only city council in Texas to have passed a resolution supporting HR 676. That is why the rally was held in Austin rather than in Houston or San Antonio. The city councils of those cities have not yet passed resolutions supporting HR 676. Several people from Houston and San Antonio attended the Austin rally.

The rally was sponsored by several organizations including the following-- Health Care For All Texans, Gray Panthers, Texas State Employees Union, the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee,Health Care--Now,Progressive Democrats of America,Physicians for a National Health Program,and Americans for Democratic Action


The following are photos from the May 30,2009 rally for single-payer health coverage in Austin. The last photo shows Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who helped lead the Austin City Council to support HR 676 while he was a council member, greeting a constituent.

Older Women Mayoral Candidates --Hazel McCallion and Carole Keeton Strayhorn

A friend (Hi Sue!) told me about Hazel McCallion, the 88-year-old mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada who has held her post since 1978.

Her story got me thinking about another female politician, Carole Keeton Strayhorn who although she is younger than Ms. McCallion has many characteristics in common with her.

Ms Strayhorn, 69, ran for mayor of Austin, just recently and lost. However, she was Austin’s first female mayor, when she won the mayor’s election in 1977, and she held onto the seat through three elections. That’s a record, Ms Strayhorn can be proud of.

Both women are colorful characters and hands-on leaders. Ms. McCallion loves hockey and is a hockey player. She also participates in community trash clean-ups.

Ms. Strayhorn, adores being a grandmother and is a feisty wordsmith, as exemplified by this quote from her 2006 campaign for Texas governor against incumbent Rick Perry.

“It is time for a change. It is time to send Governor Perry packin’.

I am a fiscal conservative.

I am a common sense conservative.

I am not a weak leadin’, ethics ignorin’, pointin’ the finger at everyone blamin’, special session callin’, public school slashin’, slush fund spendin’, toll road buildin’, special interest panderin’, rainy day fund raidin’, fee increasin’, no property tax cuttin’, promise breakin’, do-nothin’ Rick Perry phony conservative.”

Both women also came from fairly well-to-do families. Ms.McCallion’s father owned a fishing and canning company, and when she married, her husband’s family gave the newly weds, the land, which would later become Mississauga, the town, she became mayor of. Ms. Strayhorn is the daughter of W. Page Keeton, a long-time dean of the University of Texas law school in Austin and has been married three times.