AOL’s Priorities in the Toilet (or Happy Women’s Equality Day)

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Aug 242007
 

We’ll take it for granted that everyone knows that Aug. 26th is Women’s Equality Day (you did know, didn’t you?), but thanks to Gloria Feldt for flagging this little gem–seems a friend of hers was trying to find a card to commemorate the occaision on AOL.  That was when she found out that that the 26th is also National Toilet Paper Day, for which indeed AOL had a card, but none for Women’s Equality Day.  If you want to let AOL know where to flush it, check out Gloria’s post.

For more on Women’s Equality Day, check out these great links courtesy of the Kentucky Foundation for Women:

A Brief History of the Suffrage Movement and Women’s Equality Day including music, books, videos and links
http://creativefolk.com/equalityday.html#history

Equality Day Links
ERA Campaign Network http://www.eracampaign.net/

A History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement , maintained by the Susan B. Anthony Center at the University of Rochester.
http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/suffragehistory.html

Timeline of the Suffrage Movement http://www.suffragist.com/timeline.htm   Covers 1637 to 1920.

Women’s Rights National Historical Park http://www.nps.gov/wori/home.htm

National Museum of Women’s History http://www.nmwh.org/  Songs, documents, memorabilia of the suffragist movement, 1848-1921.

“Even in stone, suffragettes cause a stir on Capitol Hill” http://www.cnn.com/US/9705/10/womens.statue/index.html  (CNN)

Places Where Women Made History http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/pwwmh/

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 Posted by on August 24, 2007

Is Sen. Clinton Suffering from Testosterone Poisoning?

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Aug 232007
 

Oh how I wish Hillary Clinton would stop trying to out-macho the Republicans… at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Clinton described the government of Iraq “as “on vacation,” leaving American troops in the middle of a sectarian war.” She’s blaming the danger our troops are in on a government that we put in place while the Congressional body of which she is a member is on vacation as well? Not to mention that the Iraqi government has nothing to do with why our troops are there in the first place…

“”People have to root for America,” she said. “They have to want to be on our side.”

In Iraq, she said, the government must take responsibility for itself and its people.

“I do not think the Iraqis are ready to do what they have to do for themselves yet,” she said. “I think it is unacceptable for our troops to be caught in the crossfire of a sectarian civil war while the Iraqi government is on vacation.”

Clinton said new tactics have brought success against insurgents, particularly in Iraq’s Anbar province.

“It’s working. We’re just years too late in changing our tactics,” she said. “We can’t ever let that happen again. We can’t be fighting the last war. We have to keep preparing to fight the new war.”"

People have to root for America?? This isn’t a contest for homecoming Queen, nobody roots for the class bully.

And what is the deal with saying Iraq has to be responsible for the mess we made? As any parent will tell you, if you knock over the other kid’s blocks, you have to say you’re sorry and pick them up. How about some leadership in a viable plan to help Iraqis re-build and an urgent call for dealing with the refugee crisis? And then there is that last little line…

New war?? WTF!!! I hereby offer Sen. Clinton this re-write of those last few lines:

“We can’t fight the last war, in fact we should work to insure that there is never another war and work together to fix the damage our failed strategy has wreaked. Then we can start to repair the U.S.’s damaged reputation.” Just a thought…

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 Posted by on August 23, 2007

I’m in a Bad Mood–Part 2

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Aug 222007
 

Yesterday I got an email from Yanar Mohammed who wrote to clarify something I had posted from Al Jazeera the day before. She pointed out that while OWFI estimates the disappearance of 4000 Iraqi women, given that they are a small organization working in horrific conditions, it would be impossible to verify that number. However The Independent (UK) is estimating that 50,000 refugee Iraqi women may have been forced into prostitution, so if anything, this number may well be low.

Yanar closed her email with this line–”Thank you for still standing with us.” I wish I felt that we were doing that in some sort of adequate way. Every day our media is filled with reports of soldiers being killed, insurgents, terrorists doing this that or the other act of violence. Our politicians blather on about whether to continue the war while they keep on funding it and make pious assertions that the Iraqis have to take responsibility for fixing the mess we made and the truth is that we totally ignore the plight of these women who are experiencing what women always experience in the aftermath of war.

Several years ago when I interviewed Yanar, we talked about honor killings and the attempts (now reality) to introduce Sharia law and the situation for women in Iraq since the U.S. invasion. Yanar put it this way, “Our lives are worse now.” At the risk of extreme understatement, the lives of Iraqi women are much, much worse now than they were when the interview was conducted in 2004.

At what point do we truly stand with these women and say enough? At what point do we stand with the women in our own country and say enough? Catherine Miller, writing in the summer edition of Spheres Magazine points out women are 50% of the world’s population and we give birth to the other 50%. As she eloquently and succinctly says, “We are not powerless to stop wars.” And as a local activist friend recently pointed out, those of us who oppose this war in this country are now very much in the majority, it is time we started acting like it.

In October we will observe Domestic Violence Awareness Month. One of the things that we need to be aware of is that there is a direct connection between the money we spend destroying the lives of Iraqi women and the money that we don’t have to spend on domestic violence programs in this country. This year when we “Take Back the Night”, let’s do it in a 24 hour spanning the world kind of a way and take back the night for women everywhere.

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 Posted by on August 22, 2007

I’m in a Bad Mood–Part 1

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Aug 212007
 

Most days I somehow manage to maintain a functional level of distancing that enables me to post to this blog. Today wasn’t one of those days. The proverbial last straw was a Letter to the Editor in the Boulder Daily Camera from Janine D’Anniballe, the Executive Director of Moving to End Sexual Assault discussing the denial of federal funding for their prevention education programs. Why? Because there is a whopping total of $236,000 in such funds for the entire state of Colorado. As D’Anniballe points out, a minute of the war in Iraq costs $380,000. In otherwords, if you stop the effing war for a minute and a half, you could fund the entire state of Colorado at current levels for 2 years! Imagine what you could do if you stopped the war for an entire day… She writes,

“Something is horribly wrong with our country’s sense of priorities and our collective definition of the term “homeland security.” While we occupy Iraq and wage a war about control of oil, our infrastructure is literally (the bridge in Minneapolis) and figuratively (cuts for essential anti-violence programming) crumbling.”

She ends with this plea:

“The federal government’s priorities are elsewhere; where are yours? Go to our Web site, www.movingtoendsexualassault.org, to donate.”

It is rare that I use this space to ask for funds, there are so many organizations who desperately need help, I trust that the readers of this blog wisely give to those in their own universe. But in this case, I am urging you to donate if you can. And then get mad, very mad. Songwriter Patti Smith got it right when she wrote, “People have the power to redeem the work of fools.” We need to start exercising that power…stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow.

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 Posted by on August 21, 2007

Sources for News About Women in Iraq

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Aug 212007
 

Getting news about what is happening to Iraqi women is difficult at best. Two sources that I find to be quite useful are:

Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq

and

Iraq Slogger

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 Posted by on August 21, 2007
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