May 9, 2008
Mother's Day brunch at Jack's Restaurant had a line out the door. I was barely 18, weeks from graduating high school, but living on my own and bussing tables to pay the rent. As my boyfriend—mi novio—cooked omelets in the country kitchen, another cook, my future brother-in-law, pinned a carnation to my shirt. "Happy Mother's Day, cuñada."
Suddenly I realized, surrounded by a mix of strangers and unexpected new family, that this special day was mine now, to celebrate. But I was young, and few people knew I was pregnant—so I kept it to myself. And so it began: passing as an ordinary woman, with a secret joy pinned to my breast.
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Obama and Clinton: Don’t Count on Disunity in the Fall by Peggy Simpson
May 7, 2008
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made clear last night that they are on the same page when it comes to turning out their voters for the Democratic ticket in November’s general election.
Obama, celebrating a resounding 14-point victory in the North Carolina primary, spoke first in defying the skeptics who say the protracted primary warfare is polarizing voters and strengthening Republican chances of a November election.
“Many of the pundits have suggested that this party is inalterably divided—that Senator Clinton’s supporters will not support me, and that my supporters will not support her.
“Well, I’m here tonight to tell you that I don’t believe it,” he said. “Yes, there have been bruised feelings on both sides. Yes, each side desperately wants their candidate to win. But ultimately, this race is not about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain. This is election is about you—the American people—and whether we will have a president and a party that can lead us toward a brighter future.”
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Filmmaker Captures the Lives of Iraqi Refugee Children by Lia Petridis
May 2, 2008
Award-winning journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is touring the United States with her latest film, “The Lost Generation," a documentary on Iraq’s refugee children produced for Great Britain’s prestigious TV station Channel 4. So far, Obaid-Chinoy has been unable to find a U.S. station to televise the documentary. “A few of them have expressed reservations about showing this,” she says.
Focusing on children who have taken refuge in Jordan and Syria, the film addresses their future prospects back home, a country that has undergone constant turmoil since 2003. In the past five years, more than four million people, 20 percent of the entire Iraqi population, have been driven from their homes as a result of the war and sectarian bloodshed. Two million have become exiles, living lives across the border in Syria and Jordan.
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Eve Ensler’s Spectacular Celebrates New Orleans Women by Regina Cornwell
April 30, 2008
“I’ve been trying to free myself of Katrina’s grasp. …With what I’ve gone through I should be just stark raving mad by now, but I’m able to go on.” These are the words of Herreast Harrison, Upper Ninth Ward resident, political and cultural activist.
Welcome to New Orleans, newly christened the “Vagina of America” by playwright Eve Ensler, because, as she explained, it’s a delta, it’s fertile, and people love to party there. She chose the city to commemorate the 10th anniversary of her global V-Day movement to end violence against women and girls, and dedicated the celebration to the women of NOLA (New Orleans, LA) for holding up the sky during and since Katrina. Not one for small gestures, Ensler rented out the Superdome—the once infamous home to thousands of New Orleanians, mostly people of color, abandoned when the levees broke—and renamed it Superlove. Entry was free to all for the mega-weekend events, April 11-12.
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Challenges for Obama After Pennsylvania Primary by Peggy Simpson
April, 23, 2008
Hillary Clinton's supporters roared their approval Tuesday night when she talked about her refusal to be pushed out of the Democratic primary race.
"Some people counted me out and said to drop out," she said, and the crowd drowned her out as she added that Pennsylvania voters thought otherwise, giving her a solid 10-point margin in the primary over Barack Obama and pummeling him by 50 percentage points in blue collar towns and small cities across the state.
She reinforced her image as a fighter who can take a punch—and can give some, too.
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Benedict in America: The Man Show by Angela Bonavoglia
April 22, 2008
On Benedict XVI’s much-heralded first papal visit to the United States, we witnessed once again the spectacle and pageantry of the Catholic Church’s unapologetically all-male hierarchy.
Despite the blatant exclusion of women from the Catholic Church’s highest levels of power, I could find no piece in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time or Newsweek, or on Jim Lehrer, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Keith Oberman, or any major network evening newscast focused on the role of women in the Catholic Church.
Yet, that role remains a subservient one, and Pope Benedict, including in his prior incarnation as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has played a major part in maintaining that role.
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Women Don't Ask? No, Employers Don't Pay by Ellen Bravo
April 21, 2008
Congratulations, working women! As of today, your salary since January 1, 2007, has finally reached the total earned by your male colleagues in 2007 alone. What’s more, this pay gap is all your fault!
According to the media, the problem is that women just don’t ask. If we learned to speak up in salary negotiations, pay equity would be a hard fact.
An ABC News segment called the negotiation process “something that each of us has the ability to control…. No employer has an obligation to whisper in the woman's ear, ‘Hey, you know, you just lost out on more money because you didn't speak up.’”
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Hand-To-Hand Combat in Pennsylvania by Peggy Simpson
April 17, 2008
You could look at the bruising Wednesday night debate between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as a wake-up call about the accusations that will lie ahead in the general election, no matter who wins the Democratic nomination. Most analysts concluded that Obama took the most body blows and that he wasn't as swift on his feet with answers as expected.
Some of the blows came from Clinton, some from the ABC questioners in this last debate match before next Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. Old and not-so-old controversies were rehashed: Obama and Preacher Wright; Obama's statement about Pennsylvania voters being bitter about job losses prompting them to "cling to" religion and guns. Clinton had said the "bitter" remarks showed he didn't understand blue-collar voters and was an elitist.
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Western Pennsylvania Enjoys Its Surprise Role in the Presidential Race by Shannon Reed
April 14, 2008
Here are some of the things that one doesn’t find in Johnstown, Pennsylvania: a GAP (it closed earlier this year). A Barnes and Noble. More than one Starbucks (the first opened last Christmas). A wine store. A rate of unemployment below 10 percent. But for the last six weeks, what you can often find in Johnstown, among the perogies and abandoned steel mills, are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or one of their surrogates, as they campaign to win Pennsylvania’s Democratic delegates.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Early this year, when Democratic Johnstowners thought about the April 22 primary at all, it was to ponder whether it would be worth squeezing in a trip to the V.F.W., just to pull the lever for or against someone whose nomination was already assured. But we’ve been treated to (some might say tortured by) the most exciting Democratic nomination race in my memory, and, far from being the little city that no one cared about, Johnstown, and the rest of Pennsylvania, has become the object of much attention.
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Hillary Speaks Fluent Pennsylvanian by Nichola Gutgold
April 10, 2008
Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are senators with Ivy League law degrees. They each have a strong, vocal spouse and can stump speech, debate and wonk their way around policy with ease. These two politicians are more alike than they are different, though so far, most observers have given Clinton the edge on the debate stage and Obama the advantage in addressing campaign rallies. But when communicating the populist message that most pundits think is needed to win the blue-collar heart of my state on primary day, which is fast approaching on April 22, Hillary Clinton has the Pennsylvania vernacular down pat.
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Jo Freeman: Women Across the Political Threshold, and Then Some by Peggy Simpson
April 8, 2008
Political scientist Jo Freeman says there may well be more sexism than racism in American society today but the very fact that a white woman and a black man are finalists for the Democratic Party nomination represents a sea change in attitudes. “It reflects a turning point in American attitudes about race and sex,” she said. (MORE)
Thanks, We'll Make Our Own Media by Adele M. Stan
April 4, 2008
At a time when women of substance can seem barely present in mainstream media, there's a movement of women who have defined this as the feminist media opportunity: the moment when women can change the shape of public discourse by making their own media. At last weekend's Women, Action & Media conference (WAM!) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the creative urge was spread with evangelistic fervor. (MORE)
Today’s Scarlet Letter by Avis A. Jones-DeWeever
March 31, 2008
We like to believe that today, we have discarded Puritanical punishments in favor of a far more humane public sphere. Yet issues of stigma and shame remain powerful cultural forces that continue to shape our lives. A new study, released today by amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, confirms what countless women around the nation and throughout the world know all too well: for women especially, stigma remains an intractable burden associated with the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS.(MORE)
My Mother, Hillary and a Banner Day by Alida Brill
March 31, 2008
My mother’s birthday was March 4. She turned 100, becoming a centenarian....We celebrated this milestone with a small but festive dinner attended by six close friends and my father (a mere 96). My mother had not received a telegram or a letter from President George W. Bush, although any number of people had said she would. She didn’t actually care about the letter from the president, but she had hoped that somehow she might get a letter from Senator Hillary Clinton. (MORE)
