Josh Shapiro’s transition team sends a bad message to women

I didn’t expect to see his name again. Not in an official capacity, at least, and certainly not as an appointment to the gubernatorial transition team, a slot usually reserved for honored friends and allies of an incoming elected politician.

But earlier this month, when I scanned the list of Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro’s transition team, there it was: Marcel Groen.

The same Marcel Groen, who resigned as chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in 2018 after his refusal to address #MeToo allegations dogging the party, was picked by Gov-elect Shapiro to serve on his business development team.

It felt like a slap in the face.

Apparently Groen’s career in the Democratic Party wasn’t over, after all.

» READ MORE: What Josh Shapiro’s transition team says about how he’ll govern, and why some picks are raising eyebrows

There was a time when I thought I’d have a career in Democratic politics.

I believed that if I showed up and worked hard enough, I could succeed in that world.

I believed it, and so I showed up and did the work. I became a committee person. I knocked on doors, attended meetings, volunteered on campaigns, and went to events. I plunged into debt getting my master’s degree in government at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania. I became a Democratic National Committee delegate in 2012, and a whip for the DNC in 2016.

When I filed a sexual assault report after the 2016 DNC convention, I did what I’d been taught that strong women do: I stood up for myself. I wanted to help make sure that others didn’t have to suffer through these types of indignities as a price of admission to the party.

That’s why I was trying to break into politics, after all: I wanted to change the world for the better.

In the end, I did right by my own conscience, at least, in making the effort to pursue charges. While we didn’t win in court (it is notoriously difficult to secure a guilty verdict for sexual misconduct in the U.S. court system), I was ultimately able to take the stand, confront the man whom I reported, and speak my truth to the world.

Inspired by that experience, I began to organize with a group of women activists. We were determined to hold politically powerful abusers accountable.

Initially, we had hoped that party leadership would support us. Groen initially assured me that he supported my quest for justice, and that he would work with us to develop a sexual misconduct policy for future party events to prevent what happened to me from happening to anyone else.

As our work progressed, however, it became increasingly clear that Groen had no interest in bringing accountability to the party. Credible allegations were made against his friends, but Groen refused to take action, even as the #MeToo movement made headline after headline. By February 2018, Groen’s refusal to take action had become impossible to ignore. Gov. Tom Wolf himself called for — and ultimately received — Groen’s resignation.

Instead of apologizing, however, Groen doubled down. He sent out a letter to Democratic leaders accusing me of fabricating my experience of sexual assault.

One of his final acts as party chair, in other words, was to cynically lash out at a survivor for having the temerity to stand up for herself.

A party that enables sexual violence against its most vulnerable members is a party that is damaging its own ability to attract good candidates, and diminishes all of its candidates’ chances at the polls.

Women noticed then. Women notice now. And women are tired.

We are tired of having to endure a barrage of sexist insults and harassment in order to exist in public space. We are tired of hearing that if we want to lead, we should put up with demeaning, degrading behavior by men who feel entitled to our bodies.

We are tired of being told to be grateful for our second-class seat at the table. We are tired of men like Marcel Groen, who have made a career of telling us to sit down and be quiet.

When Josh Shapiro brings these sorts of men to his table before even taking office, the message is clear: He believes women’s right to respect is not important. Any and every gesture toward restoring Groen’s status within the party sends a clarion message that the era of accountability is passed.

Unfortunately for Shapiro — and fortunately for the rest of us — Democratic women are not about to allow the misogynistic old guard to reassert its hold on the party apparatus. We are not going back.

Shapiro would do well to remember that he spent his campaign claiming to be a man committed to weeding out bad actors in politics. As attorney general, he marketed himself as a crusader, a man willing to take on corruption within his own party. But his willingness to go after other Democrats, it seems, falls short of imposing consequences for connected, rich white men who enable sexual predators.

Whether he realizes it or not, Shapiro depended on women to win the governor’s seat, and will depend on us again when it inevitably comes time to do battle with antichoice Republicans and in the 2024 state midterms.

In an era where the right to abortion has become a lightning rod issue driving voters to the polls, Democrats cannot afford to alienate women voters and leaders. #MeToo may have dropped from the headlines, but stories of sexual misconduct have not. More and more, people are speaking out about our experiences, holding elected officials and other leaders accountable, and refusing to go back to a time when harassment and assault were accepted and routine.

If Democrats want to win, all of us — including Shapiro — need to harness that energy.

For that to happen, elected leaders need to stop taking women for granted and begin to demonstrate an actual respect for us, our issues, and our bodily autonomy.

This starts now, with Shapiro’s transition team. Enablers like Groen need to be shown the door, permanently.

They never should have been allowed in at all.

Gwen Snyder is a professional organizer and longtime Philadelphia activist.