Today is the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, also known as Women's Equality Day. You probably (hopefully?) know that the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote (okay, theoretically…this was many years before the passage of the Voting Rights Act so in reality we are probably talking about white women who were married to white men who owned property who got the right to vote but let's celebrate anyway, okay?).
But how much to you really know about women's suffrage and the struggle to get the 19th Amendment passed? Here is a video that should help. Watch carefully. There will be a quiz. No really. There will be a quiz.
Okay, now for the quiz. Go to 9 Questions About 90 Years of Suffrage on the MS. magazine blog. Get ready because it is hard. I got a 4 our of 9 which was rated as "just passed" but I am pretty embarrassed.
How much do you know about women's suffrage in the U.S.? How did you do on the quiz? What do you teach your kids about the right to vote in the U.S. – particularly who got it when?
Many in the U.S. hadn't heard of "blood diamonds" until the popular film with Leonardo DiCaprio. The mining and sale of diamonds from Sierra Leone, the Congo and other African countries have long financed and fueled war, slavery and unspeakable violence in parts of Africa.
Here is a video that can help. Humorous and informative, the actors and activists in it explain what conflict minerals are, how they hurt people, and how a simple pledge to purchase products once they are available without conflict minerals can help draw attention to this problem.
Raise Hope for Congo, the organization that made this video, also has educational materials for individuals and schools that can help in learning about conflict minerals and the situation in the Congo. It also has activist resources for such projects as taking a campus conflict mineral free.
While the content is not appropriate for all ages (at what age do you explain the concept of rape to your kids?), learning about Congo's present and past can help our children make a safer world for all children – including those in conflict regions.
How do you teach your children how their spending affects people in other parts of the world?
Hands Across the Sand is a movement with a simple message: NO to offshore oil drilling, YES to clean energy. In the literal wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there seems no better time to join hands at the waters' edge in solidarity with others who wish to protect the world's oceans.
I am spending a few weeks with my family at the New Jersey shore. Knowing a Hands Across the Sand event was planned for yesterday, my eldest son and protest buddy came with me in search of a gathering. We had to do a bit of searching – knowing only cross streets and that we would be looking for some unknown number gathering at 11 a.m. and holding hands beginning at noon (local time) the world over. We has just about given up when we saw this:
It looked like perhaps six or seven people off in the distance but we ran toward them and as we got closer, they looked like this:
And when we reached them, they looked like this:
My son and I joined the line and as it grew closer to noon, the line grew longer.
The mission for this event was to join hands across the sand silently for fifteen minutes, 12 p.m. to 12:15 "draw[ing] a line in the sand and embrac[ing] a clean energy future." We held hands and even though none of us had signs or chanted anything, people asked, "Is this about the oil spill?" Strangers saw a line of strangers holding hands looking out into the Atlantic Ocean and knew: yes, this is about the spill and drilling and protecting the oceans. And more people joined the line. And then it looked like this:
And at 12:15, we all walked into the ocean together still holding hands.
Hands Across the Sand is a movement made of people of all walks of life and crosses political affiliations. This movement is not about politics; it is about protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, and fishing industry. Let us share our knowledge, energies and passion for protecting all of the above from the devastating effects of oil drilling.
While Hands Across the Sand began in Florida just this past February (and before this most recent horrible oil spill), yesterday's event was international and co-sponsored by a long list of environmental and other activist group including MoveOn.org, Greenpeace and Clean Water Action.
And I was there wearing this T-shirt from We Add Up you can get by clicking through the sidebar. Ten dollars of your purchase of this limited edition BP Oil Spill T-shirt goes to the Gulf Restoration Network.
Not long after I first started using Twitter – which was about the same time I finally began this blog – there was a great deal of Tweeting about BlogHer '09. It sounded like the place everybody who was a female blogger wanted to be. There was controversy – something about "swag," excessive freebies that made people look and feel all cheap and whore-y. But I joined BlogHer, saw that I would never be able to get into the advertising network (it is full up for pretty much ever) and hoped I would get to the next BlogHer conference and learn those secrets people were swearing they learned in between getting all that controversial stuff.
In the autumn, tickets for BlogHer '10 went on sale and I did something I only do with music concerts and the ballet – bought a ticket as soon as I could. The conference is in New York City, a few hours by train from where I live so that made the decision easier. If there had been a plane ticket involved, I wouldn't have considered going. It is out of character for me to buy a ticket to a conference that has nothing to do with work, social justice, children or some combination of all three. As the conference was fewer and fewer months away, I was a bit worried buying the ticket was a bad idea. There was a "popular girls" feel to the world of BlogHer. I didn't use the site. Few bloggers I read were going to be there. Other blogger conferences happened without me and reports back seemed to be about products and selling stuff – not about activism or information or being a good writer. As I worried more and more that I had succumbed to that urge to join an "in crowd," I finally began to hear of bloggers whose work sorta had to do with mine going. A handful. I might be all right.
And then it happened. A blogger who had attended the #NestleFamily junket wrote a post drawing attention to BlogHer's announcement that Stouffer's, a Nestle brand, would be a conference sponsor.
I didn't blog about #NestleFamily. I wrote about it in the January/February 2010 Mothering magazine where I am Politics Editor and the most comprehensive on-line coverage of that incident can be found at PhD in Parenting here and at follow-up posts on that blog.
This is not a post about why I boycott Nestle but I do. It is not only its sale of infant formula in flagrant and infamous violation of the WHO Code. It is the combination of corporate conduct, including the use of child slaves to pick cocoa beans, that led to the boycott and my decision to participate in it. I am sure I get a Nestle product by accident now and then but I work pretty hard at keeping Nestle products out of my life. The roughest spot I have been in was speaking at a La Leche League conference recently. I was speaking in a few minutes in a ballroom so hot and humid rare flowers would have grown happily. For medical reasons, I must have a large supply of water at all times. You would be hard pressed to find me these days without my giant BPA-free water bottle (a great speaker gift- thank you UNC-Greensboro!) in my hand but I hadn't flown it out with me. I put the need for water in the speaking room in my contracts. I went to the fridge in the back of the room to grab some water bottles and there they were – Nestle water. I wasn't the first to see them. There was already a crowd of conference attendees grumbling about Nestle in the room. The conference organizer was at my side soon and then she was out the door to do something I don't even want to know about to the hotel employee responsible. But I needed to go on and I needed water. And I drank the Nestle water.
Yeah, that story sounds a bit much but it is true. So when I read that a Nestle brand was going to be one of the eighty or so sponsors of BlogHer '10, I knew I had a problem. There was some behind the scenes posting about who was going to do what and whether BlogHer might do something. I thought that perhaps even if Nestle was going to be at the conference, perhaps they could sponsor a particular event I could avoid, rather than the entire conference. Just my impression, but I don't think BlogHer organizers cared less. Conference sponsorship for BlogHer is a "show me the money" enterprise. And from the discussions about previous conferences – samples, products, brands, stuff, stuff, stuff – I should have known that before I bought my ticket.
A few bloggers who oppose Nestle corporate practices have written posts about why they are going to BlogHer anyway. They have been criticized and they have been supported and they have been mocked by people I criticized for going to #NestleFamily. And a handful of us – four by my count – are boycotting BlogHer. It's my decision. I made it. I'm proud of it. And I think it is sad so few people care. Someone even had the gall to criticize me for refusing to sell her my ticket.
So have at me people. What are you willing to do to stand up for what you believe is right? If you boycott Nestle, what do you do to avoid using its products? And, an important question to me, why do you think so few people are boycotting BlogHer?
With thanks to @thecurvature, I bring you an extraordinary video by an organization called Marriage Equality, an Irish organization working to support civil marriage for gay and lesbian people.
Top Hat over at Its All About the Hat suggested a Breastfeeding Blog Carnival called "This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like." [This is my first blog carnival so I will link to the other participants as soon as I figure out the rules of the game - UPDATE: I have added some links at the bottom to other Carnival participants.] Luckily for me, the Carnival theme left a good bit of room for interpretation since I don't currently have a nursing toddler. I have many fond memories of nursing my kids when they were toddlers and so do they. I and they remember how important it was that they could nurse when they were sick or hurt or needed comfort. We nursed when they needed some time with mom. We nursed when they were getting used to sharing mom with a new sibling. We nursed when they were hungry. We nursed to sleep. We nursed standing up and sitting down and in positions I used to call "Olympic Freestyle Nursing."
A nursing toddler can also go hiking and he looks like this:
But with my kids getting older, I am seeing more of what a nursing toddler looks like when he is no longer nursing and is no longer a toddler. That can be someone who really understands how important it is that kids get to nurse and mothers get to nurse their kids. A former nursing toddler isn't fazed by seeing women breastfeed wherever they are.
A few years ago my then 12 year old son saw me helping to organize a nurse-in. I explained that a woman had been quietly nursing her baby on a bench in a shopping mall when a security guard ordered her to stop and move. She refused, saying she needed to finish feeding her son. Soon she was surrounded by security guards who engaged her husband in a shouting match and left the woman terrified. When the mom shared her story and the shopping mall management refused to respond to her complaint about her treatment, a nurse-in was planned.
My son was confused – why would anyone think there was something wrong with a mother feeding her baby? Then he was mad – this was wrong. He asked if he could come to the nurse-in. When he saw me making signs, he asked if he could create one for himself. I told him that we expected press coverage and there was a chance his friends would see a photo of him from the protest. He was adamant that he wanted to be seen.
Back to the Carnival theme – This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like. He looks like a proud breastfeeding activist.
UPDATE: Other What Does a Nursing Toddler Looks Like Carnival participants.
When it does not create or protect the right of a woman to breastfeed. When is breastfeeding rights legislation a reallyreally bad thing? When it makes it even more difficult for a woman to breastfeed than if there were no law at all. And this really really bad thing is what is happening in North Dakota.
Witness the sad journey of North Dakota Senate Bill 2344. As originally introduced this past January, SB 2344 amended the North Dakota crimes code to exclude breastfeeding from all forms of indecent conduct, and created a new section of the state civil rights law making discrimination on the basis of breastfeeding prohibited both in public accommodations and in the workplace. North Dakota would go from being one of a handful of states with no law protecting breastfeeding to having one of the strongest laws. But then the bill made a trip into the North Dakota Senate Human Services Committee where on February 16th SB 2344 was completely gutted. The Committee removed the entire section of the bill which would have created a civil right – therefore removing the only mechanism for enforcing any protection the bill would have created. The Committee also removed the section creating a right to pump breast milk in the workplace.
But the Committee did not just remove vital portions of SB 2344, it added a few words too: "discreetly" and "if the woman acts in a discreet and modest manner." So instead of a new section in the civil rights code, the bill adds this to the health code (therefore without any penalty for violation):
Right to breastfeed. If the woman acts in a discreet and modest manner, a woman may breastfeed her child in any location, public or private, where the woman and child are otherwise authorized to be.
So who decides what is a discreet and modest manner? You? Me? The owner of the public accommodation? The police? The mother? The bill does not say. So who will it be? Whoever doesn't want a woman to breastfeed in public. After all, if a woman is breastfeeding in a restaurant and the owner orders her to stop or leave, the final arbiter of whether the mother is arrested for trespass is the police. Will the police officer watch the woman breastfeed to determine whether she is breastfeeding in a discreet and modest manner? Will he rely on the owner for that determination? Will witnesses be interviewed?
And what does "discreet and modest manner" mean? Visible skin? Visible areola a/k/a the Facebook test? A flash of nipple (I think I'll call this the "Janet Jackson test")? Anyone who has breastfed a child knows that a woman's control over these factors in any given nursing session with any particular child is pretty limited. Any person with breasts can probably understand that a large (pun intended) determining factor in one's ability to control the occasional flash is breast size.
The amended SB 2344 isn't just vague, ambiguous, and totally lacking in protections. Unlike any breastfeeding law to date, North Dakota's SB 2344 arguably makes some public breastfeeding a crime. How? With that tricky word "discreetly." Rather than excluding breastfeeding from the crime of "indecent exposure" as so many other states do, SB 2344 amends the criminal law as follows:
The act of a woman discreetly breastfeeding her child is not a violation of this section.
So does that mean that a woman breastfeeding "indiscreetly" is in violation of the indecent exposure statute? To my knowledge, no woman in North Dakota (or anywhere else – and I have been following this for years) has ever been charged with indecent exposure for breastfeeding. Under North Dakota's existing indecent exposure law, the prohibited conduct is:
A person, with intent to arouse, appeal to, or gratify that person's lust, passions, or sexual desires, is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if that person:
a. Masturbates in a public place or in the presence of a minor; or
b. Exposes one's penis, vulva, or anus in a public place or to a minor in a public or private place.
Not conduct easily confused with breastfeeding. So excluding "discreetly" breastfeeding must mean that indiscreetly breastfeeding, whatever that might mean, is indecent exposure, right?
I have heard the argument that something is better than nothing. Hey, North Dakota has no law concerning breastfeeding so this is better than nothing, right? Wrong. This law offers breastfeeding women nothing – no protection against harassment and discrimination when in public, no rights or protections in the workplace – and it explicitly limits the way in which breastfeeding in public is to be done, possibly even to the point of creating a crime. This particular "something" is most definitely worse than nothing.
Tomorrow I will watch the U.S. presidential inauguration with my children and I will weep. I will tell them that we are watching history, glorious history, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I, like many people my age in the U.S., never thought I would live to see an African-American president.
I grew up in a country in which only rich white men could be president. I grew up certain I could never be the leader of my country. People who grew up in poverty, like me, could not be president. People who were female, like me, could not be president. People who were Jewish, like me, could not be president. When I was born, the country had its first Catholic president.
Well, despite all the hope the election of Barack Obama brings to me and to my children, someone like me could not be elected president in the U.S. today. I feel sure I will live to see a woman elected president. I think there is a decent chance I will live to see a Jew elected president. But I am also an atheist and that fact alone would likely prevent my election.
whether they would vote for "a generally well-qualified" presidential candidate nominated by their party with each of the following characteristics: Jewish, Catholic, Mormon, an atheist, a woman, black, Hispanic, homosexual, 72 years of age, and someone married for the third time.
In my view, all of these characteristics are irrelevant to qualification to hold office. Happily, only 5% responded they would not vote for someone who was black. Good news and the subsequent election proved the respondents were largely truthful. Seven percent would not vote for a Jew and only 11% answered they would not vote for a woman.
I was sad, but not surprised, that 43% would not vote for someone if he or she was gay. However, the only single characteristic that would prevent more than half of the respondents from voting for a candidate was atheism. Because I do not believe in a god, 53% of the respondents would not vote for me.
I thought about this poll quite a bit yesterday while I was watching the We Are One performance at the Lincoln Memorial. Virtually every song had a mention of god or prayer. Virtually every performer mentioned god or said "God Bless You" to the crowd.
Tomorrow, the U.S. Constitution requires that Barack Obama say:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Nothing else. He chooses to use the bible (not all presidents have). He chooses to add "so help me God" (not all presidents have). And the ceremony will include not one but two prayers (prayer was not part of U.S. presidential inauguration until 1937) – one prayer delivered by a man with a history of anti-gay positions.
I will weep tomorrow, as I did on election night watching the tears of civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and the crowds of people who, like me, never thought they would see this happen. I will tell my children again about what I think the election of a black president means in this country for people who are different and historically disenfranchised. But as an atheist, much of the day will be a slap in the face. On a day all about a new era of inclusion, I will still be on the outside looking in. And I can't tell my kids that even they can be president some day because if they grow up to be atheists like their parents, probably they can't.
After years of lobbying and failed legislative bills, Massachusetts breastfeeding advocates have at long last succeeded in getting a law passed to protect breastfeeding in public. Yay and congratulations to all the people who have worked so hard and for so long! I am particularly pleased to see that that the new law, which goes into effect in April of 2009, has an enforcement provision. As I wrote about at some length in the July/August Mothering, women in states with public breastfeeding laws lacking enforcement provisions have found themselves with no way to effectively use these laws. Many woman find themselves shouting "but I have a right!" waiving the law, while the store owner says "so what?"
"An Act to Promote Breastfeeding" states:
Chapter 111 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following
section:-
Section 221. (a) A mother may breastfeed her child in any public place
or establishment or place which is open to and accepts or solicits the
patronage of the general public and where the mother and her child may
otherwise lawfully be present.
(b) Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the act
of a mother breastfeeding her child, and any exposure of a breast incidental
thereto that is solely for the purpose of nursing such child, shall not be
considered lewd, indecent, immoral, or unlawful conduct.
(c) No person or entity, including a governmental entity, shall, with the
intent to violate a mother’s right under subsection (a), restrict, harass or
penalize a mother who is breastfeeding her child.
(d) The attorney general may bring a civil action for equitable relief to
restrain or prevent a violation of subsection (c).
(e) A civil action may be brought under this section by a mother
subjected to a violation of subsection (c). In any such action, the court may:
(i) award actual damages in an amount not to exceed $500; (ii) enter an order
to restrain such unlawful conduct; and (iii) award reasonable attorney fees.
(f) A place of religious instruction or worship shall not be subject to
this section.
So the new Massachusetts law creates a private right of action – the ability to file a civil lawsuit – for a mother against anyone who "restrict[s], harass[es] or penalize[s] a mother who is breastfeeding her child."
In my usual role as "she who finds the problems," I have some concern with how the enforcement provision will work. Needless to say, there may be some disputes about what conduct on the part of, say, a store owner will be considered restricting, harassing, or penalizing, Asking a nursing woman to leave a store or refusing to serve a nursing woman seems obviously to meet the test. I wonder whether asking a mother to move or cover will be considered harassing if nothing is done when the mothers says no. I certainly think asking is harassing but I suspect this will remain a question until a court decides. But I don't think this wording is a problem with the law – often the more specific one gets in drafting a statute the more you end up accidentally excluding things you want to prohibit. Laws get too long and unwieldy. In noting the room for interpretation in this new law, I am just giving women a bit of a heads-up that passing a civil rights law is never the end of the journey.
I also have a concern with the language requiring that recovery under the private right of action requires that the wrongdoer act with the "intent to violate a woman's right." Intent is essentially what is going on in someone's head when he or she acts and it can be difficult to prove. I second Angela White's concerns over at Breastfeeding 1-2-3 that the intent requirement might be used to protect wrongdoers ignorant of the law but agree that that argument is generally unsuccessful. I am just baffled as to why the intent requirement is there at all. Seems like an unnecessary hoop to jump for someone bringing a lawsuit. Angela suggests that a nursing woman might be asked to move for some other legitimate reason and I too hope that is why the provision is there.
There are two more problems I see with the enforcement provision that might prevent women from making full use of it. First, few people have the skill to file a lawsuit without hiring a lawyer and lawyers cost money. I prefer an enforcement provision under which a mother can file a complaint herself with a government agency and can go forward without expenses that might exceed anything she might recover. The new Massachusetts law does allow the court to award attorneys fees (which it should) but lawyers usually need to be paid upfront and one risks that the attorney fee award won't be as much as what the fees actually are. Believe me. Been there.
Which leads me to my other question about the recovery element of the new law. In a successful lawsuit under this law, a court may award "actual damages in an amount not to exceed $500." This is where I need a Massachusetts lawyer (I am going to try and find one and check back with you but feel free to speak up about this). I am concerned that this provision puts another burden on the woman to prove that she has been injured in a measurable way – "actual damages" also known at Common Law as "compensatory damages" means different things in different states. It may mean a measurable monetary loss. Hmm.
Any woman who has been harassed for breastfeeding in public can tell you about her embarrassment, her humiliation, sometimes her fear that she would be arrested or touched physically by the menacing stranger who was harassing her. In what way will a woman have to prove that this resulted in loss that should be compensated with money? I need a Massachusetts lawyer to tell me if my concerns about this are valid.
Finally, I'll note that the new Massachusetts law does not apply to religious schools and houses of worship. While I believe currently only Illinois specifically limits the application of its public breastfeeding law in houses of worship, it has been pointed out to me that houses of worship are excluded from the definition of "public accommodation" in other states and therefore civil rights laws often apply differently in religious buildings. I don't agree with it. I can't see the justification. But there it is.
After all that peeing on the parade, let me say again that it is a great thing that Massachusetts finally has a public breastfeeding law and that it is one with an enforcement provision. Massachusetts has gone from one of only five states with no law protecting breastfeeding in public (the final four are West Virginia, Idaho, North Dakota, and Nebraska) to being one of only nine states with a penalty for violating the right to breastfeed in public (check here for the other eight). And that is something to celebrate.
For real? Visible areola? I will admit I am no expert on porn but I have never seen Big Areola magazine sitting next to Hustler or flipped passed Areolas Gone Wild in the adult pay cable. I am sure there are people driven mad with desire at the sight of that red circle around a woman's nipple – for every body part there is a fetishist. But a "common standard" for deciding whether an image is obscene? I don't think so.
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