The New Republic's March issue includes "Capitol Offenses," a package of eight essays on sexual discrimination and harassment in D.C., across politics, policy and the media.
Why it matters: It's a deep dive into the hidden #MeToo crisis in D.C., where harassment exists in every industry and at every level of the economy.
- Elizabeth Drew, who has covered Washington since taking a job with Congressional Quarterly in 1959: "Washington has all the ingredients for inappropriate sexual adventuring. For one thing, it’s full of lonely people — in particular, men disconnected from their families. ... This heady brew of ambition, power, loneliness, and opportunity ... can be disastrous."
- Ana Marie Cox has no sympathy for the backlash: "If we judge these men by the damage they did to women’s careers, each of these famous figures is, at best, guilty of manslaughter; at worst, a serial killer. Can their defenders still argue that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime?"
- "Domestic Workers, Too," by Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance: Nannies, cleaners and caregivers "work in private homes, usually without a formal work agreement, in the shadows of the economy. They are mostly women, disproportionately women of color, and often immigrants ... They are invisible, and yet their labor powers our society. They do the work that makes all other work possible."