Activism

You didn’t think Title IX would reach its 40th birthday and go unrecognized here at JWA, did you?

Many of you may not know this, but there is a kind of rite that happens here at JWA for newbies such as myself: to be given an assignment with almost impossible challenges.

Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown has become a new heroine of the pro-choice movement, and she achieved this status both by invoking her Judaism and by using the word “vagina” on the State House Floor, during a heated debate of an omnibus anti-abortion bill.

I call myself a second-generation feminist, and when I do so, I’m thinking of my mom.

Pride. When we are aware of our own dignity and worth; when we feel deep pleasure from our own and others’ achievements; when we delight in who we are and what we do. Pride.

As you know if you read the Jewish Women’s Archive blog, May is Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM).

“It’s funny how practices that seem way out in one generation become so commonplace in another that people wonder what took so long.

One hundred and ten years ago today, something surprising happened. Jewish immigrant housewives in New York City—concerned and angry about a sharp rise in the price of kosher meat from 12 cents to 18 cents per pound—launched a kosher meat boycott that lasted nearly a month, spread to several other boroughs of New York, sparked violent riots and arrests, and attracted much media attention before ending with the successful lowering of meat prices.

Happy May Day! Originally, May Day was a pagan springtime festival, roots of which survive in the traditions of flower-festooned maypoles and the crowning of the “Queen of the May.” Since the late 19^th century, it has also been a workers’ holiday. Though in the US it has been officially replaced (and I would argue, coopted) by Labor Day in September, May Day remains an occasion for social protest of many kinds.

If you listen closely, you may hear people wishing one another a "Happy 4/20" today. Why?

How do I love Marge Piercy? Let me count the ways:

The news of Adrienne Rich’s death yesterday at age 82 sent me immediately to my bookshelves and an extended swim through the currents of words she has left behind. All writers believe in the power of words—and maybe especially poets, whose words are fewer and so carefully chosen—but for me Rich’s writing particularly and persuasively argued for the ability of words, language, expression to create new realities, to change the world.

In an ironic, but perhaps unplanned turn of events, this year's Back Up Your Birth Control Day of Action comes the day after the premiere of season 4 of 16 and Pregnant. (And if you think I haven't been waiting for this television event since the end of last season...you would be wrong.)