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Not Your Mama’s Mother’s Day!

May 10, 2015 By Pam

Maria Hamilton, a founder of Mothers of Justice United, speaks to the crowd.

Maria Hamilton, founder of Mothers for Justice United, speaks to the crowd.

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts.”

These are the opening words of the “Appeal to Womanhood” penned by Julia Ward Howe in 1870. She dreamed of a special day, a “Mothers’ Day,” when women around the world would rise up and demand an end to killing.

MILLION MOMS MARCH, 2015

On Saturday, May 9, 2015, hundreds of mothers and others gathered for a Mothers’ Day weekend march on Washington to demand an end to the killing of their children by highly militarized police forces in the U.S.

Police abuse of power has been a headline-grabbing aspect of institutionalized racism in recent months and a galvanizing focus of the new anti-racism movement sweeping the nation from Ferguson to Baltimore.

“Mothers for Justice United” was the primary organizer of Saturday’s event. This action would have made Julia Ward Howe proud.

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

HOWE’S DREAM OF PEACE

In 1862, Howe, living in the shadow of her famous abolitionist-reformer husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, wrote a poem which, when set to a popular folk tune, became the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the semi-official song of the Union army during the Civil War. It made Julia famous overnight.

Almost ten years later, she was overcome by grief at the outbreak of another war — the Franco-Prussian war. The world seemed steeped in endless bloodshed. Convinced that there were better ways to solve conflicts, she called on the women of the world to “interfere in these matters.” This was strong stuff in the days before women had the right to vote or much say in their own destinies.

42-Howe's-proclamationIn 1870, she convened a meeting of leading activists in New York City. In her opening statement she said, “Patience and passivity are sometimes in place for women — not always … If women did not waste life in frivolity, men would not waste it in murder.” She hoped her call to action would “pierce through dirt and rags … through velvet and cashmere.”

Howe hoped to arrange a Woman’s Peace Congress. Instead, in 1873, she established a festival called “Mothers’ Day,” intending it to be an annual day for women’s advocacy for peace and justice. For several years, this Day was celebrated in Boston, New York, Edinburgh, London, Geneva, and, at least once, in Constantinople.

In 1876, women came to Philadelphia from France, Italy, England, and Germany. Multilingual Howe translated every speech into English on the spot. Exciting as this was, her Mothers’ Day never caught on in the general population.

ANNA JARVIS THREW HER SALAD ON THE FLOOR

Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) knew that her mother, Ann, was a remarkable woman. Of Ann’s eleven children, only four lived to adulthood. The others died in epidemics common in their West Virginia Appalachian community. This inspired Ann to organize Mothers Work Days in the 1858, to teach women new ideas about hygiene and better sanitation.

Ann Jarvis (left) and her appreciative daughter Anna (right)

Ann Jarvis (left) and her appreciative daughter Anna (right)

During the Civil War, Ann urged women to assist both Confederate and Union wounded. After the war, she created a “Mothers Friendship Day” to bring people together in their bitterly divided region. She braved death threats to call for reconciliation. At one event she organized, a band played both “Dixie” and the “Star Spangled Banner” (a popular patriotic song, not yet the national anthem). Then, everyone stood and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

After her courageous and visionary mother died, Anna wanted to honor her. She lobbied hard for a national “Mother’s Day.” With the approval of Congress, Mother’s Day was proclaimed official by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.

Before you could say “M is for the Many things she gave me; O means only that she’s growing Old…” (from a song titled “Mother,” written in 1915 and loathed by mothers everywhere), the day became a sentimental success, especially for greeting card manufacturers and florists.

By 1920, Anna was deeply sorry she’d ever thought of Mothers’ Day. Hating its commercialization, she spent what money she had lobbying against it. She never married and was never a mother.

One day, so the story goes, Anna ate at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, which had been an early endorser of her Mother’s Day. In their Tea Room, they offered a “Mother’s Day Salad” on the menu. Anna ordered it, but, when it was served, she stood up, threw the salad to the floor, and walked out, leaving the money on the table. It was a futile gesture. Her holiday had taken hold, and she hated it. It is said that Anna Jarvis died blind, bitter, and broke.

WOMEN RECLAIM THE DAY

Here’s a brief sampling of actions showing how women have attempted to reclaim Mother’s Day as a day of action for peace and justice.

~ 1987, lesbians in Seattle held a Mother’s Day demonstration to call attention to custody battles fought by lesbian mothers
~ 1981, 700 women in Washington, D.C. marched through the rain, protesting the Reagan administration’s increased military budget.
~ 1987, Clergy and Laity Concerned, an interfaith peace and justice organization, proclaimed a Mother’s Day of Mourning in response to the US-sponsored war against Nicaragua.
~ 1992, The Church of Gethsemane in Brooklyn (Presbyterian U.S.A.) began a yearly Mother’s Day public awareness campaign on behalf of “women in prison, children in crisis,” providing congregations across the country with origami flowers and bookmarks, suggested prayers, and informational readings.
~ 2000, Million Mom March in Washington, D.C. drew 750,000 people to promote gun control legislation
~ 2015, Million Mom March was organized to protest police violence.

TO GO DEEPER

“After Baltimore, A Call to Reclaim Mother’s Day” by Valerie Bell, 4/28/15 in Foreign Policy In Focus,

“The Radical History of Mother’s Day” by Matthew Paul, 5/11/14, The Daily Beast.

“Anna Jarvis Was Sorry She Ever Invented Mother’s Day” by Joel Oliphint, May 8, 2015, BuzzFeed.

“A Tale of Two Days: Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day” in This River of Courage: Generations of Women’s Resistance and Action by Pam McAllister (New Society Publishers, 1991).


Mother’s Day for Peace by bravenewfoundation (2:50) Introduced by Gloria Steinem, famous women read Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation” — Alfre Woodard, Vanessa Williams, Ashraf salimian, and others.


Julia’s Voice Documentary: Take Back Mothers Day (Part 1) [9:09 mins]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Ann Jarvis, Anna Jarvis, Church of Gethsemane, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Julia Ward Howe, Maria Hamilton, Million Moms March, Mother’s Day history, Mothers for Justice United

How the Mothers of the Plaza Fought a Police State

April 29, 2015 By Pam

41-marchThey called it the “Dirty War.” After the military coup in 1976, people deemed to be “subversives” began to disappear. They disappeared if they raised their fists, raised their voices, raised their eyebrows. They disappeared if they sang freedom songs; joined a union; worked to alleviate poverty, hunger, illiteracy; were seen with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

CHILDREN DISAPPEARED

There were heavy footsteps in the night, muffled screams, and then nothing — no body, no proof of torture, no world outrage. The families of the “disappeared” waited and endured, bewildered. With no confirmation of death there could be no funeral, no closure, no coming to terms, no mourning period, no healing.

During the Dirty War, as many as 30,000 left-wing people disappeared. Some were arrested, taken to torture centers, drugged, and loaded onto military planes from which they were hurled into the Río de la Plata. Pregnant women were taken into custody by the secret police and killed after they gave birth; their babies were given to childless military families to be raised with “conservative values.”

41-2-womenThe mothers sought information. They waited in barren corridors at the Ministry of the Interior in Buenos Aires, only to be told to go home.

One day, an official smirked as he dismissed Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti who sought information on her disappeared son Néstor. As she passed other mothers on her way out, she muttered, “It’s not here that we ought to be, it’s the Plaza de Mayo.” And that’s how it all began.

MOTHERS GATHERED

The next Saturday, April 30, 1977, Villaflor and thirteen other women left their homes to do the bravest thing they had ever done. At a time when all public demonstrations were forbidden, they stood together, witnesses to the disappearance of their children. Later, they looked back on that day, joking that, even in the heart of the most vicious dictatorship, no one cares if you demonstrate on a Saturday afternoon in a deserted square.

41-circleAfter that, the women decided to go to the Plaza on Thursday afternoons when it was crowded. Because it was illegal for more than three people to stand together in a public place, the women walked slowly around and around the Plaza. They had been “walking in circles” anyway, at government offices. Now, they would walk in circles on behalf of their children. Their numbers grew, and they became known as “the Mothers of the Plaza”.

Their public witness made them bold. On October 4, 1977, they paid for an ad in La Prensa with photos of 237 of their disappeared children and the names of the mothers under the headline: “WE DO NOT ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN THE TRUTH.” Ten days later, several hundred women marched to Congress carrying a petition with 24,000 signatures. They demanded an investigation into the disappearances.

MOTHERS DISAPPEARED

41-NinosThe government reaction was severe. Many protesters were arrested. American and British journalists who tried to interview the Mothers were harassed or detained. Still, the women came. They were no longer looking for their individual sons or daughters: they were seeking each others’ children as well.

Azucena Villaflor, martyr

Azucena Villaflor, martyr

On December 10, a new ad ran in La Nacion. That same night, men armed with machine guns abducted Villaflor from her home. Her body washed up on a beach a few months later.

Fear gripped the Plaza as some of the Mothers were disappeared, never to be seen again. Now, few women dared come on Thursdays for fear of being taken. No doubt, the junta’s secret police felt smug as they purged Argentina of left-leaning “subversives.” It seemed that guns, torture, and terror could defeat even the Mothers of the Plaza.

41-comfortLittle did the military regime know that, in churches around Buenos Aires, the Mothers continued to gather. They entered dark sanctuaries, as women do in cities all over the world every day. Some lit candles, then found a place in the pews to pray.

What the authorities couldn’t see was that the women were passing notes to each other as their heads were bowed. In these “silent meetings,” decisions were made without a word spoken aloud.

MOTHERS REAPPEARED

41-women-&-postersIt must have been a great surprise to the military regime when, seemingly out of nowhere, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo stepped out of the darkened churches in May 1979, determined to formalize their organization. Within several years, their official membership numbered in the thousands.

41-sidewalk-artThe women returned to the Plaza. They wore flat shoes and white scarves embroidered with the names or initials of the relatives they were seeking.

White scarf graffiti began to appear on pavements and walls. The Mothers carried photos of their disappeared children.

Some days, after walking the circle, a few women would leave the square, take a megaphone down a side street and each tell her personal story. They learned that it was easier for people to identify with the agony of one parent lamenting the disappearance of one child than it was to grasp the notion of thousands who had disappeared.

THEY PROVED THAT COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS

41-graffitiThis is a story without an ending. The women endured tear gas, nightsticks, arrest, and torture, but something had changed. The Mothers were determined that they’d never again retreat into silence and shadows.

Their visible courage was contagious. Onlookers who had been too afraid to stop long enough to acknowledge these ordinary-extraordinary women, now stood still to applaud the Mothers as they circled the square.

The Mothers inspired women in other countries to stand up to repressive regimes, and they helped bring the day, in December 1983, when Argentina inaugurated a democratically elected government.

41-rainIn July 2005, the body of Azucena Villaflor was finally identified, along with the bodies of several other founding members of the Mothers of the Plaza. Forensic experts confirmed that they were victims of the junta’s “death flights” and had been flung from a military plane into the ocean or gulf. Villaflor’s remains were cremated. At the 25th Annual Resistance March of the Mothers, in December of 2005, her ashes were buried in the center of the Plaza de Mayo, to remain forever as a symbol of courage.

Now, the Mothers have become the “Grandmothers of the Plaza.” They support the work of finding their stolen grandchildren, using DNA to determine their existence and true identity. The story continues…

TO GO DEEPER

41-bookCircle of Love Over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, edited by Matilde Mellibovsky, one of the founding Mothers. She collected the testimonies into a book, first published in Spanish in 1990, in English in 1996.


“U2 – Mothers of the Disappeared” (5:21 mins)


“Mothers of the Disappeared” / U2 cover by Evenstar (7:21 mins)


“Argentinean Mothers of the Plaza Commemorates 35 Years of Struggle” News Report overview (2:16 mins)


“Madres de la Plaza” slide show and song, by Bandido Urbano 83 (2:34 mins)

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Argentina’s Dirty War, Azucena Villaflor, Circle of Love Over Death, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Matilde Mellibovsky, Mothers of the Disappeared, Mothers of the Plaza, Plaza de Mayo, white scarf graffiti

Women and Water

April 22, 2015 By Pam

40-Painted-FacesOn museum visits, we view chipped vases decorated with images of women bearing water jars. In Sunday school, we learn about the woman-at-the-well.

“Water-haulers” of the world. That’s what UNICEF calls women and girls. From ancient times to today, it has been the work of women to find water for their families, for drinking, gardening, cooking, and bathing.

And, around the world, women are in the streets, protesting the failure to build and maintain systems to provide and protect safe, clean, free water. In honor of Earth Day, here’s a sampling of women’s creative nonviolent actions for the planet’s most precious resource.

GAMBIA’S “MARATHON WALKER”

40-Marathon-Walker(April, 2015) Last week’s World Water Forum was basically non-news, but social media was flush with photos of Siabatoa Sanneh, the strong and imaginative 43-year-old from Gambia who used the Paris Marathon to generate publicity about the water crisis.

Photographed carrying 20 liters of water on her head and wearing a traditional dress instead of runner’s clothes, Sanneh stood out from the crowd of 56,000 others, got our attention, made us think about water. She told reporters that, like many other women in Africa, she and her two daughters walk the distance of a marathon every day to get drinking water.

SMASHED WATER JARS IN INDIA

40-Kenya-smashed-pots(April, 2015) Women from the town of Sopore stood in the middle of Chanakhana Road earlier this month and threw earthenware pots to the dry ground. The clay shattered and traffic stopped. What good are pots, when there’s no water to fill them?

The women, frustrated by an ongoing water shortage, placed most of the blame for the crisis on members of the legislative assembly (“toothless and useless”) and on the Public Health Engineering department for not fixing damaged pipes. The women told reporters that their families could no longer wait.

KENYAN WOMEN BRING BABIES TO THE BLOCKADE

40-Kenya-babies-blockade(February, 2015) Hundreds of women, some carrying babies, blocked traffic for seven hours to protest the water shortage in Loitokitok.

Babies cried and drivers fumed, but the women stood their ground, demanding to speak to a high-ranking government official. Ordinarily, the police would have used teargas, but they held back because of the babies.

The Deputy Governor told the press that he recognized there were problems, but promised that talks were underway to determine how to share water from Mt. Kilimanjaro.

RIO WOMEN INVADE OLYMPIC MEETING PLACE

40-Rio-Golf-smaller(February, 2015) Several women broke through security and invaded the hotel where organizers were planning the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, objecting primarily to the new golf course and luxury apartments being erected in the city.

The women didn’t make it past the lobby, but managed to garner media attention to the concerns of groups like “Occupy Golf” and “Golf for Whom?” outraged that, to build the golf course, developers took part of a once-protected nature reserve, home to several endangered species of butterflies and frogs, bulldozed the land, and uprooted several hundred trees.

Southern Brazil is experiencing its worst drought in 80 years. From São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro people are suffering water rationing and rolling power cuts that limit access to light and the Internet. One district of Rio has been without tap water since December. Yet, while residents are making heroic efforts not to waste a drop, sprinklers are spritzing the new golf course to keep that grass lush and green.

TURKISH WOMEN SAY “NO WATER, NO SEX”

15-Absurdistan(August, 2001) Women in rural Sirt endured months of inadequate water supply, forcing them to wait in long lines at a fountain. Fed up, they declared, “No water, no sex” and called for a Bedroom Boycott. The men soon petitioned the local governor for assistance and got the 27-year-old water system repaired. This successful action inspired two films. (Movie still: “Absurdistan” — see YouTube clip below.) 

NIGERIAN WOMEN SHOCK SHELL

40-Nigeria-nude-protest(January, 2014) Although Nigeria is one of the world’s major oil producers, the Niger Delta, where the oil is found, remains poor and undeveloped. Women in Bayelsa State blamed Shell. The oil company had not kept its promises to provide clean drinking water for the local population, replace a faulty generator, and renovate a school.

Hundreds of women marched through Peremabiri with bare breasts and blocked the entrances to the oil platform with red cloth. They carried signs that read “SHELL: WE NEED WATER, LIGHT, SCHOOL FOR OUR CHILDREN.”

TO GO DEEPER

Water For Africa website: http://www.waterforafrica.org.uk  This non-profit organization builds boreholes, sustainable water sources, greatly shortening the distances that women must walk each day to find water.

“When Restive Sopore Town Broke Pots in Protest” Kashmir Life, April 8, 2015.

“Loitoktok Women Take Babies to Protest Against Water Shortage” by Kurgat Marinday, The Star, February 26, 2015

“Half-nude Women Protest Against Shell in Bayelsa”  Ecowas Tribune, January 8, 2014

“Drought-hit Rio Braces for Carnival Water Shortages” by Adriana Brasileiro, Reuters, Feb. 12, 2015


Women and Water, excellent video overview by Water For People (3:09 mins)


The 2001 Turkish sex strike inspired two modern films. The 2008 award-winning German-French comedy Absurdistan, directed by Veit Helmer and filmed in Azerbaijan, tells about two young lovers in a remote Soviet village, caught up in a sex strike for repair of a water pipeline. Absurdistan (2 min trailer)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Absurdistan, Golf for Whom, Marathon Walker, Occupy Golf, sex strike, Siabatoa Sanneh, Water for Africa, women and water

Lady Godiva: Tax Protester

April 15, 2015 By Pam

39-Godiva-John-CollierLady Godiva was creative and compassionate. You gotta give her that. She may not, however, have been real. Or, she may have been real but her ride wasn’t. In any case, the legend lingers.

THE STORY

It’s said that Godiva, an Anglo Saxon noblewoman in 11th century England, was distressed that her husband Leofric had become greedy and heartless. His excessive taxes were a hardship on the long-suffering common folk. What’s more, Leofric did not really need the money. He was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the land.

Lady Godiva begged her husband to lighten up. He thought her concern amusing and joked that, if she would ride naked through the middle of Coventry, he would indeed lower the taxes. He never thought she’d do it.

Faster than you can say “no peeking,” Godiva got on a white horse in her birthday suit, with no cover but her long hair, and rode down the main street. Out of respect and appreciation for her efforts on their behalf, the townspeople preserved her modesty by going into their homes and closing the shutters.

39-Movie-PosterOnly one man gave in to curiosity. “Peeping Tom” was struck blind for taking advantage of Godiva’s courage, compassion and vulnerability.

Leofric honored the agreement, impressed by his wife’s devotion to the people. And Lady Godiva continues to be good to Coventry. Tourists gather beneath the Lady Godiva clock to see her take her ride and watch Peeping Tom struck blind, every hour on the hour.

TO GO DEEPER

39-ChocolateLady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend by Daniel Donoghue (Wiley-Blackwell, 2002) This scholarly book examines the evolution of the medieval myth.

Godiva Chocolates links their name to the legend and sponsors a program celebrating “inspirational women around the world.”

Videos:


“Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross” — the Godiva connection to the nursery rhyme. Worthwhile for the historic details, with attempts at humor, some of which are actually amusing, albeit from a male POV. (11:08 mins.)


“Discover Godiva Gallery” at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, England (2:22 mins.)

Credits:

Feature: Detail from illustration of Lady Godiva by Granger

Painting of Lady Godiva and red-draped horse by John Collier

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Coventry, Godiva Chocolates, Godiva Gallery, Lady Godiva, nursery rhyme, Peeping Tom, Ride a Cock Horse, tax protest

Lucy Stone: Independent and Rational

April 8, 2015 By Pam

38-Lucy-Stone-PortraitLucy Stone (1818-1893) was at odds with patriarchy from the start. As a child with an eye for the practical, she vowed to learn Hebrew and Greek so she could determine if the Bible passages which seemed to grant men power over women had been properly translated.

BOLD WOMAN = A “LUCY STONER”

While studying at Oberlin College in Ohio, the first school to admit both women and blacks, she needed to work to pay her tuition. Outraged that she earned less than half of what male student-workers were paid, she demanded and won equal pay.

After graduating from Oberlin in 1847, she became a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society led by William Lloyd Garrison. She baffled audiences by making connections between racism and sexism, speaking for women’s rights as well as for the abolition of slavery.

38-Lucy-Stone-BloomersAfter dress reform advocate Libby Miller introduced Turkish style pantaloons (later dubbed “Bloomers”), Stone began wearing the outfit and, in an even more daring move, cut her hair short. She seemed fearless in the face of public scorn and endured ridicule on the lecture circuit, but eventually found the cause too distracting.

In 1855, when she married Henry Browne Blackwell, the couple read aloud a protest statement during the wedding ceremony. They declared a wife to be an “independent, rational being” and challenged laws that “confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority.” To further emphasize women’s independence, Stone retained her own name. This shocked many people and confused others. It also inspired some women to become “Lucy Stoners” and keep their birth names after marriage.

TAX RESISTANCE INSPIRED BY THOREAU

In 1858, shortly after the couple moved to Orange, New Jersey, Stone generated nationwide publicity, highlighting the injustice of government taxation of women who, denied the vote, were without representation.

38-Lucy-Stone-PhotoInspired by Henry David Thoreau who had spent a night in jail twelve years earlier for refusing to pay taxes in opposition to the US war with Mexico, Stone and Blackwell returned their bill for property taxes, unpaid. They sent along an explanation — that taxation without representation was a violation of American principles.

Stone wasn’t arrested, but the government seized some of her belongings and sold them at an auction. Still, she and Blackwell used the occasion to give several pro-suffrage, anti-taxation speeches and circulated petitions asking the New Jersey legislature to grant women the right to vote. Their actions inspired a number of women to withhold their taxes.

Stone remained active throughout her life for the cause of women’s rights. In 1870 she founded Woman’s Journal with her husband and contributed to the paper until her death in 1893.

TO GO DEEPER

38-Lucy-stone-STAMPLucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life by Sally G. McMiller, Oxford University Press, 2015

Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality by Andrea Moore Kerr, Rutgers University Press, 1992

Friends and Sisters: Letters Between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 (Women in American History) edited by Carol Lasser and Marlene Deahl Merrill, University of Illinois Press, 1987

 

Credit

Feature Photo: Lucy Stone, Boston Women’s Memorial (2003) by sculptor Meredith Bergmann (http://www.meredithbergmann.com)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: American Anti-Slavery Society, bloomers, Henry David Thoreau, Libby Miller, Lucy Stone, Lucy Stoners, Meredith Bergmann, Sally G. McMiller, William Lloyd Garrison, Woman’s Journal

Hubertine Auclert’s “TAX STRIKE” ~ Paris, 1880

April 1, 2015 By Pam

37-Auclear-bannerThe world didn’t make sense to 32-year-old Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914). On the one hand, she was considered a French citizen, expected to obey the laws of her country and pay property taxes. As a woman, however, she was denied the right to vote. She began plotting a way to unhinge the unfair system.

“I DO NOT VOTE, I DO NOT PAY”

On election day, February 1880, Auclert and several other taxpaying women of Paris walked past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration, demanding rights as well as responsibilities. They were turned away.

Using the publicity she’d generated from the attempt to vote, Auclert called for a women’s tax strike. She wrote:

Since I have no right to control the use of my money, I no longer wish to give it. I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women. I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations. I do not vote, I do not pay.

She was joined by 20 other women, eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women. When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike. The remaining women continued to appeal the decision. But, when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in. They had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.

“A REBEL … ALMOST SINCE BIRTH”

37-Auclert-deskAuclert was an energetic organizer, activist, and writer. She’d been drawn to Paris, eager to fight for women’s suffrage. She had no parents or spouse. She wrote,

My life had been of little importance, everything was calm and perfectly simply: no accidents, no adventures, the existence of a recluse. But then I became a crusader, not by choice but from duty. Since no one else would undertake that which I want to attempt, I overcame my excessive shyness and went to war like a medieval knight.

It didn’t take long for her to leave liberal feminists behind and set out on a more radical route. In 1876, at age 28, she helped found an organization called Rights of Women, later changed to Women’s Suffrage Society. The motto was “No duties without rights; no rights without duties.”

“I have been a rebel against female oppression almost since birth,” she wrote. She claimed her fighting spirit was inspired by the “brutality of man toward woman which terrified my childhood, prepared me at an early age to demand independence, and consideration for my sex.”

WRITER-ACTIVIST

37-citoyenneIn 1881, Auclert co-founded a newspaper, La Citoyenne [Female Citizen], with Antonin Levrier.  She also organized petition drives, demonstrations, and boycotts. She traveled to England to meet with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and British suffragists. In 1885, although it was not legal, she ran for elected office, a symbolic gesture she repeated in 1910.

In 1888, Auclert married her publishing partner, Levrier, and moved to Algeria. There, she was outraged by the imposition of French customs on the Islamic population and published her observations in Arab Women in Algeria. After her husband died in 1892, Auclert returned to Paris, shocked to learn that La Citoyenne had folded.

37-Le_Petit_JournalIn 1908, she was arrested for symbolically smashing a ballot box during municipal elections in Paris, which she denounced as “unisexual suffrage.”

Throughout her activist life, Auclert used the written word to persuade and educate. In her essay “Le Vote des Femmes,” she wrote: “Just as many modern inventions can function only by combining certain elements, suffrage needs all the female and male energy of our nation to become an evolutionary instrument capable of transforming the social condition.” A pacifist, it was her contention that women would use the vote to end war.

Bitter and witty, especially when articulating the economic injustice of women’s oppression, Auclert wrote, “If people were paid to bring children into the world, I truly believe that men would find a way to monopolize the job.”

TO GO DEEPER

37-Book-CoverHubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette by Steven C. Hause. Yale University Press, 1987.

Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 by Patrick Kay Bidelman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

French Feminism in the 19th Century by Claire Goldberg Moses. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984.

Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, Volume 1 by Helen Rappaport. ABC-CLIO, 2001.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Arab Women in Algeria, French Feminism in the 19th Century, Hubertine Auclert, La Citoyenne, Pariahs Stand Up, Rights of Women, tax strike, The French Suffragette, Women’s Suffrage Society

Kusunose’s Tax Protest in Meiji Japan

March 25, 2015 By Pam

36-parasol-womanKusunose Kita (1836-1920), a 45-year-old widow, resented her situation. After her husband’s death, she assumed his property tax responsibilities, but was denied his political rights. In September, 1878, to make a point, she attempted to vote in a local election. After she was turned away, she wrote a bold letter to government authorities. It read in part:

I do not have the right to vote. I do not have the right to act as guarantor. My rights, compared with those of male heads of households, are totally ignored. Most reprehensible of all, the only equality I share with men who are heads of their households is the onerous duty of paying taxes.

Kusunose Kita, “Grandmother Popular Rights”

Kusunose’s letter, the first known public petition written by a woman in Japan, was reprinted in newspapers across the country. Overnight, Kusunose earned the honorary appellation Minken Baasan, “Grandmother Popular Rights.” Because she dared question the status quo, she became a symbol of women’s new struggle for empowerment during the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Ueki Emori, leader of Japan’s popular-rights movement

Ueki Emori, leader of Japan’s popular-rights movement

The Home Ministry was not impressed by Kusunose’s insistence that “rights and duties must go together” and demanded that her back taxes be paid immediately.

One man who was impressed, however, was Ueki Emori (1857-1892), the leader of Japan’s popular-rights movement and champion of women’s rights. After reading the letter, he met with Kusunose and several other women to hear their ideas. In 1879, he published a series of essays promoting women’s equality.

36-womenThe new ideas of justice made sense to other progressive thinkers as well, especially in Kōchi Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku, the birthplace of Japan’s human rights movement in the Meiji period. There, both men and women worked outside of the home to make ends meet. A mother’s movement helped establish numerous daycare centers. Kōchi is sometimes called the “Kingdom of Nursery Schools.”

And it was in Kōchi that the local government found a legal loophole and allowed women to vote in assembly elections in 1880. The national government closed the loophole in 1884, but it was a start. The seeds of a new day had been planted, thanks, in part, to Kusunose’s brave protest.

TO GO DEEPER

36-BookAnderson, Marnie S. A Place in Public: Women’s Rights in Meiji Japan. Harvard University Asia Center, 2011.

Hane, Mikiso, ed. “Introduction” from Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Voices of Japanese Rebel Women. NY: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Sievers, Sharon L., Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983.


“Aspects of Women (1888), the woodblock art of Taiso Yoshitoshi” (2:16 mins.)


“Women’s Suffrage Around the World” by Encyclopaedia Britannica (4:30 mins.)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Flowers In Salt, Grandmother Popular Rights, Japanese women’s suffrage, Kusunose Kita, Marnie Anderson, Meiji era, Mikiso Hane, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows, tax protest, Ueki Emori

The “Red Virgin,” France’s Revolutionary Teacher

March 18, 2015 By Pam

“Victimes des Révolutions” by Paul Moreau-Vauthier. A goddess defends ghostly Commune martyrs at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

“Victimes des Révolutions” by Paul Moreau-Vauthier. A goddess defends ghostly Commune martyrs at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Women in France have a long tradition of radical activism. Theirs is the country of Joan of Arc, who led an army in 1429; Marie de Gournay, who wrote about gender equality in 1622; and the 800 women who marched to the National Assembly at Versailles in 1789 to demand bread. In 1791, Olympe de Gouges wrote a “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Citizen” and was beheaded two years later for “having forgotten the virtues which belong to her sex.” And then, there was Louise Michel (1830-1905).

BEWARE OF THE WOMEN!

Mosaic street art at Montmartre.

Mosaic street art at Montmartre.

Prussian troops invaded France in 1870 and captured Emperor Napoleon III. Paris did not accept defeat easily. One of those who resisted the invasion was Louise Michel, nicknamed the “Red Virgin,” a poet, teacher, anarchist, and revolutionary.

That winter, Michel was both a participant in and witness to the Parisian uprising. In her Memoirs, she wrote about the women revolutionaries in Paris at that time.

Heroic women were found in all social positions … They would have preferred to die rather than surrender, and dispensed their efforts the best way they could, while demanding ceaselessly that Paris continue to resist the Prussian siege … Beware of the women when they are sickened by all that is around them and rise up against the old world. On that day the new world will begin.

Montmartre graffiti art. Rough translation, “The people manage to obtain only that which they take.”

Montmartre graffiti art. Rough translation, “The people manage to obtain only that which they take.”

Despite their efforts, the city was forced to surrender in January, 1871. Young soldiers of the National Guard (the Parisian popular militia) sank into mud up to their ankles and were slaughtered by Prussian forces. Even after they were allowed to elect a national government house in Versailles, the invaded population remained bitter.

The Versailles government was nervous about the continued resistance in Paris. In March, when the National Guard reclaimed its’ lost cannons in a show of bravado, the Versailles troops crept back into the sleeping city to seize the cannons.

MARCH 18, 1871: HOUSEWIVES STEP INTO HISTORY

35-posterEarly in the morning of March 18, 1871, the housewives of Paris set out on their usual errands to buy bread and milk and stepped into the pages of history. They opened their doors to find that soldiers from Versailles had occupied Paris during the night. Word spread quickly, as more and more women came out of their houses. Soon, a crowd of over 1,000 stood gaping at the young soldiers.

Paris was at war again. The streets filled with French soldiers — those from Versailles fighting on behalf of the invading Prussians and those of the Parisian National Guard fighting for their beloved hilltop, Montmartre, their city, their nation.

35-housewivesNo one knows how it happened that the women found themselves speaking with one voice that day. They approached the soldiers from Versailles asking, “Will you fire on us? Will you fire on your brother Parisians? On our husbands? Our children?”

Women surrounded the soldiers of the eighty-eighth Battalion and formed a barrier between them and the local men of the National Guard. When General Lecomte ordered his soldiers to fire, the soldiers turned around and arrested their own general. Several streets away, General Susbielle encountered similar resistance. He too ordered his cavalry to charge but, to his chagrin, the men retreated. The women cheered.

Louise Michel later wrote of March 18:

The Butte of Montmartre was bathed in the first light of day through which things were glimpsed as if they were hidden behind a thin veil of water. Gradually the crowd increased … The women of Paris covered the cannons with their bodies. When their officers ordered the soldiers to fire, the men refused … When we had won our victory, I looked around and noticed my poor mother who had followed me to the Butte of Montmartre, believing that I was going to die… On this day, the eighteenth of March, the people wakened.

All over the city, women stopped horses, cut their harnesses, and urged the soldiers from Versailles to join their brothers in the National Guard. That evening, the troops were ordered to withdraw.

FROM THE PARIS COMMUNE TO EXILE

For the next two months, the people’s revolutionary socialist government ruled the city. It was called the “Paris Commune.” But difficult days of death and defeat lay ahead for the people. Thousands were killed in the streets, executed, or sentenced to exile.

Statue by Émile Derré of Louise Michel, the revolutionary teacher.

Statue by Émile Derré of Louise Michel, the revolutionary teacher.

Michel was captured, tried, and found guilty. She demanded the death penalty, crying, “Since it seems that any heart which beats for liberty has the right only to a small lump of lead, I demand my share… If you are not cowards, kill me!”

The court, however, did not want to make a martyr of her, so it sentenced Michel to exile in a prison colony in New Caledonia in the South Pacific for almost ten years. There, she learned from and taught the Kanaka children.

Granted amnesty in 1880, she returned to Paris, hailed as a heroine. Although she defended the use of violence as a tool of revolution, her own primary weapons were the words she gave the people in her poems, essays, school lessons, and speeches. For her, learning and teaching were the greatest tools in creating the new world of peace and justice. She wrote:

Do men sense the rising tide of us women, famished for learning? We ask only this of the old world: the little knowledge that it has …

Your titles. Bah! We do not want rubbish. Do what you want to with them. They are too flawed and limited for women … What we do want is knowledge and education and liberty… And then men and women together will gain the rights of all humanity.

35-stampShe continued to teach, speak, and fight against injustice for the rest of her life, was arrested and jailed several more times. When she died in 1905, thousands mourned throughout France and the world.

Today, schools, a Paris Metro stop, streets, and squares are named for her. There are statues and plaques bearing her legend and stamps issued with her image. Louise Michel remains a heroine of working people.

TO GO DEEPER

35-book-coverBooks:

The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel, edited by Bullitt Lowry and Elizabeth Ellington Gunter, (University Alabama Press, 2003)

Articles:

“Walking the Streets of Paris in the Footsteps of Louise Michel” on John Meed’s blog

Videos:


“Great Lives: Paul Mason and historian Carolyn Eichner discuss Louise Michel”  (28 mins.)

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Louise Michel, Marie de Gournay, Olympe de Gouges, Paris Commune, Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Red Virgin

International Women’s Day — Born in the U.S.A.

March 6, 2015 By Pam

34-PosterAccording to one legend, International Women’s Day commemorates a March 8 demonstration in 1857, when women garment workers on New York City’s Lower East Side took to the streets to protest their deplorable working conditions. Problem is, there is no record of such a protest on that date.

Legends aside, the official holiday had modest beginnings in 1908 when the Socialist Party of America appointed a Women’s National Committee to Campaign for the Suffrage. This committee recommended that a day be set aside every year to work for women’s right to vote.

“CURSED WITH THE REIGN OF GOLD LONG ENOUGH”

34-Helen-KellerSocialists in the U.S. were not as rare in the early 1900s as they are today. Eugene Debs, leader of the Socialist Party, received 900,000 votes when he ran for president in 1912. “I am for Socialism because I am for humanity,” he said. “We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough.”

By 1914, Oklahoma (!!) had elected six socialists to the state legislature. In Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, there were 55 weekly socialist newspapers.

Helen Keller, Jack London, and other famous people were not afraid to be identified as socialists.

“HOME SHOULD MEAN THE WHOLE COUNTRY”

Bust of Clara Zetkin in a Dresden park.

Bust of Clara Zetkin in a Dresden park.

In 1909, American socialists agreed to designate the last Sunday in February as “National Woman’s Day.” Women throughout the U.S. held mass meetings and listened to union organizers and others call for equal rights for women. In one address, writer/ lecturer Charlotte Perkins Gilman said, “It is true that a woman’s duty is centered in her home…” but she clarified, “home should mean the whole country and not be confined to three or four rooms or a city or a state.”

In 1910, in Copenhagen, at the Second International Conference of Women, Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin, the German women’s rights leader, proposed internationalizing the American Woman’s Day. It passed unanimously among the women, as it did a few days later at the general International Socialist Congress.

FEBRUARY OR MARCH?

The first celebration of International Woman’s Day was in 1911. There were rallies worldwide. According to an account by Russian delegate Alexandra Kollontai, the slogan of the new celebration was, “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism.”

34-suffrageThe day was named, the slogan chosen, but a date was never specified. Consequently, from 1911 to 1918, International Woman’s Day was celebrated on different days throughout the world.

In the U.S., it continued to be celebrated in February; in other countries, March. Whatever the date, it became a day for women’s celebrations, demonstrations for women’s liberation and workers’ rights, speeches, and, increasingly, a day for peace activism. It was widely held that women would use the ballot to end war.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1915, Clara Zetkin called on socialist women from neutral as well as warring nations to use the day to protest the war. Two years later, in Italy, women protested food shortages and posted this notice:

Hasn’t there been enough torment from this war? Now the food necessary for our children has begun to disappear. It is time for us to act in the name of suffering humanity. Our cry is “Down with arms!” We are part of the same family. We want peace. We must show that women can protect those who depend on them.”

THE WOMEN’S STRIKE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

34-Russia-strikeThe International Woman’s Day protest that changed the world occurred that year in Russia. Women had planned a day of speech-making and leafletting (March 8 by Western reckoning on the Gregorian calendar, February 23 on the Julian calendar used in Russia at the time). The spirit of the day carried them beyond these simple plans.

Coming on the rise of long struggle and many strikes, thousands of women left their homes and factories to protest food shortages in Russia, high prices, war, and the suffering they had so bitterly endured.

That day, the women went on strike. Trotsky wrote in The History of the Russian Revolution:

A mass of women, not all of them workers, flocked to the municipal duma demanding bread. It was like demanding milk from a he-goat. Red banners appeared in different parts of the city, and inscriptions of them showed that the workers wanted bread, but neither autocracy nor war. Thus, the fact is, that the February revolution was begun from below, overcoming the resistance of its own revolutionary organizations, the initiative being taken of their own accord by the most oppressed and downtrodden part of the proletariat, the women textile workers, among them no doubt many soldiers’ wives. 

Russian women inadvertently inspired the last push of a revolution. A general strike spread through Petrograd, and, within a week, Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate.

FROM WOMAN TO WOMEN TO EXTRAORDINARY

After 1917, in honor of women’s role in the Russian Revolution, International Woman’s Day secured its place on March 8. The day became official in 1921, and the name changed to plural (Women’s) after 1945.

George W. Bush signs the Women’s History Month proclamation, March 10, 2008.

George W. Bush signs the Women’s History Month proclamation, March 10, 2008.

Today, IWD is celebrated around the world, from Afghanistan to Zambia. In the U.S., a consistent effort has been made to downplay its labor roots.

Here, International Women’s Day morphed into Women’s History Week and finally Women’s History Month — a time set aside to celebrate noteworthy women who have made extraordinary contribution’s to history and, um, not so much women garment workers. Sigh.

 

TO GO DEEPER

“International Women’s Day History” The University of Chicago summary

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Alexandra Kollontai, Clara Zetkin, Helen Keller, International Women’s Day, Luise Zietz, March 8, National Woman’s Day, Socialist Party of America, Women’s History Month, Women’s History Week

Toilets: Why Women Can’t Wait!

February 27, 2015 By Pam

33-FEATUREWhether you call it the Ladies’ Room or the Loo, the Potty or the Powder Room, access to toilets is — worldwide — a woman’s issue.

In places with adequate, modern plumbing, it’s about demanding “potty parity.” What woman hasn’t known inconvenience and discomfort when waiting in crazy long lines at a public restroom, often with little kids in tow, trying to “hold it,” worrying over the first twinge of menstrual cramps or a crucial vote pending: women serving in the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t have a restroom of their own until 2011. Before that, they had to tinkle with the tourists in a room clear across Statuary Hall, far from the House Chamber.

In places without adequate sanitation, the lack of bathroom facilities can be a matter of life and death for women and children, and that’s no bathroom joke. An estimated 2.5 BILLION people (37% of the world’s population) have next to no place to do their business, which means squatting where they can and wading through puddles and all kinds of crap, in all kinds of weather, fending off snakes, bugs, and human predators.

“PEE-IN” PROTEST ON HARVARD YARD

Florynce Kennedy

Florynce Kennedy

Florynce “Flo” Kennedy (1916-2000), the radical feminist lawyer and Black Power activist who coined the motto “Don’t agonize, organize,” was known for her outrageous tactics in the fight against racism and sexism.

She understood the hardships faced by trailblazers with full bladders at Harvard University, where female students had to be excused from classes or exams to go in search of the rare toilet for women.

On June 7, 1973, Kennedy led women around Harvard Yard, chanting, “To pee or not to pee, that is the question.” Their numbers grew when they came to the steps of Lowell Hall, an old building with only one bathroom — for men.

Addressing the crowd, Kennedy explained that restricting bathrooms was a way to reinforce the superior-inferior relationship of different segments of a community, just as public bathrooms had been used to reinforced racial divisions for years in the South.

Several women stepped forward with glass jars and splashed bright yellow liquid on the steps. As the crowd cheered, Flo gave a raised fist gesture of protest and warned, “Unless Lowell Hall gets a room for women so that women taking exams don’t have to hold it in, run across the street, or waste time deciding whether to pee or not to pee, next year we will be back, doing the real thing!”

INDIA: “NO TOILET, NO BRIDE”

33-India-womenAround the world, women and girls head for streams, trees, fields, or bushes in the dim light of dawn and dusk, and, on top of all the inconvenience and unpleasantness that implies, risk sexual attack every time they have to pee. In India, an estimated 620 million people have one option: “open defecation” — answering the call of nature, quite literally, in nature. More people in India have cell phones than indoor toilets.

When Anita Narre got married in May, 2011, she walked out on her husband two days later, promising to come back when he built an indoor toilet for her. Her demand not only worked, but inspired a government sponsored “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign. Now, all across the country, there are signs and murals painted on the sides of buildings reading “NO TOILET, NO BRIDE.” Other murals show a woman squatting, looking anxiously over her shoulder at an approaching male, and dreaming of an indoor toilet.

33-India-RAPE-#2Rape happens everywhere, but last year (May, 2014) two teenaged cousins in rural northern India, desiring nothing more than to relieve themselves before going to bed, went out and never came back. They were gang-raped, then strung up in a mango tree where neighbors found their bodies the next morning. Rape is common, but hanging dead girls’ bodies from mango trees is not. This crime shocked the nation and sparked protests across India, raising awareness about sexual assault and the basic need for easy access to safe toilets and privacy for women and girls.

KENYA: “FLYING TOILET” PROTEST

33-Kenya-flying-toiletIn October, 2014, protesters marched to the Kenyan Ministry of Health offices from the impoverished “informal settlement” known as Mukuru on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. They’d had enough of “flying toilets.”

“Flying toilets” are plastic bags full of urine and feces used by people without toilets. The bags are then hurled through the air. Sometimes, they bounce off tin roofs or walls, hit people, or collect along roadsides and train tracks, burst open and splatter excrement, which attracts flies or leaks into water systems. The cause of a train derailment on Kenyan tracks several years ago was determined to be an accumulation of “flying toilets.”

33-Kenya-toilet-protestThe Mukuru protesters, mostly women, waved signs and sang songs in the streets of Nairobi’s financial district, deliberately slowing traffic to protest the government’s slow action in providing sanitation facilities. Once at the Health Ministry office building, the women staged a sit-in. They wore headbands printed with the Swahili word for “togetherness.”

SOUTH AFRICA: “POO WARS”

Cape Town: The media have dubbed protests here the “poo wars.” Frustrated by failed promises to provide better sanitation services and unfazed by the threat of arrest, protesters in recent years have dumped bags of human waste inside government offices and thrown raw sewage at legislators.

33-South-Africa-toilet-seatSoweto: In June, 2014, police used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters in this Johannesburg neighborhood, when they blocked a major road in Soweto and pulled down their pants to show their scorn. They’d inherited the “bucket system” from the apartheid (white rule) era. Although apartheid was officially discontinued in 1994, the people of Soweto are still using buckets for toilets, and they’ve had enough.

Chatsworth: In the Crossmoor settlement outside of this Durban suburb, angry residents have blocked traffic by setting tires on fire. One protester was photographed with a toilet seat around her head. Their demands were basic: toilets and water.

CHINA: WOMEN’S TOILET TAKEOVER

33-China-Occupy-ToiletAfter being forced to “hold it” one time too many, Li Tingting, a university student, led a nonviolent action dubbed, “Occupy Men’s Toilets” in February, 2012, demanding more public toilets for women.

To protest the unfair ratio of male to female toilet stalls throughout Guangzhou, in south China, 20 women occupied a men’s restroom near a park. The women stayed only three minutes in each of a series of “occupations.” They apologized to the men and asked them, in solidarity, to hold their bladders for a few minutes.

A few days later, toilet access activists attempted to occupy men’s toilets in Beijing, near a bus terminal. They were reprimanded and detained by police, but the English-language edition of China Daily (a state paper) ran an article the next day with the headline: “TOILET OCCUPATION GROUP IS FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS,” congratulating the activists on highlighting a problem.

33-China-signOn November 19, 2014, “World Toilet Day” (yes, there really is a World Toilet Day, and, having researched this blog essay, I now understand why), Li and two dozen students and engineers petitioned the government, specifically calling for 2 women’s toilets for every 1 for men. They posted photos online of women holding signs that read “2:1.” When Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympics Games, they’d used a ratio of 4-to-1 for the tourists.

TO GO DEEPER

Articles:

“The Everyday Sexism of Women Waiting in Public Toilet Lines” by Soraya Chemaly, Time, January 5, 2015.

“Women in the House Get a Restroom” by Nancy McKeon, The Washington Post, July 28, 2011

“To Pee or Not to Pee, Sexism at Harvard” by Irene Davall, On the Issues Magazine, Summer, 1990.

“In India, Latrines Are Truly Life Savers” by Vivekananda Nemana and Ankita Rao, The New York Times, Nov. 13, 2014.

“Crossmoor Residents Blockade Road, Demand Water and Toilets” blog Shannon In South Africa.

“Nairobi’s Female Slum Dwellers March for Sanitation and Land Rights” by Mark Anderson, The Guardian, Oct. 29, 2014.

“Demanding Toilet Justice for the Women of China” by Jess Macy Yu, The New York Times, November 19, 2014.

“‘Occupy Toilet’ Movement Spreads” by Frank Lade, Weekly World News, Feb. 24, 2012

World Toilet Day website

Videos:


“India: No Toilet, No Bride” United Nations story, (2:30 mins.)


“India’s Toilet Revolution” — how lack of safe sanitation facilities impacts the women (6:11 mins.)

Photo Credit: Nairobi women’s sit-in protest lack of toilets. Photo by Karel Prinsloo

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Florynce Kennedy, flying toilets, Harvard pee-in, Li Tingting, No Toilet No Bride, Occupy men’s toilets, potty parity, World Toilet Day

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Pam McAllister

In 1982, I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence and then wrote two books about women’s use of resistance and action: You Can't Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage.

I've spent a lifetime compiling stories of courageous, creative actions, categorizing them (a la Gene Sharp), writing books and articles, speaking at university forums, church retreats, feminist conferences. I’ve also joined in the action -- antiwar protests in the '70s, Take Back the Night marches in the '80s, prison reform rallies in the '90s, and Occupy Wall Street actions in recent years.

I am currently researching more examples of nonviolent action for peace and justice around the world for two new books -- one for/about children and another about women (whose actions are still so often left out or overlooked).

Here I am with Barbara Deming, my mentor and friend, in Sugarloaf Key in the early ‘80s. The photo has faded, but the memories and love have not.

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