In This Together: The Power of a Movement

Issue 250 — January 15, 2024

Re-print: Originally Published January 21, 2019

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The two movements that have shaped my life converged this long weekend.

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King’s Less-Known Speech Teaches 3 Leadership Lessons We Can All Use Now

Issue 218 — January 16, 2023

January 16, 2023: The nation celebrates the birthday of Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King today.

For many, the holiday acknowledging Dr. King’s transformational significance in American History has become primarily a welcome long weekend off from work. For others, it’s the opportunity to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy in secular and religious settings, as President Joe Biden did at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King had been the pastor.

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Women’s Equality Day and the Civil Rights March

It was all over the news for days. Every pundit, every political talk show, every newspaper march-on-washington-widerunning big retrospective spreads. Op eds galore, and reminiscences of what it was like to march together toward equality.

Today, August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, the day that commemorates passage of the 19th amendment to the US constitution, giving women the right to vote after a struggle that lasted over 70 years. A big deal, right?

Right. But that’s not what all the news was about. In fact, though President Obama issued a proclamation and a few columnists like the New York Times’ Gail Collins gave it a nod, hardly anyone is talking about Women’s Equality Day. At least not in consciousness-saturating ways that garner major media’s attention, as Saturday’s March on Washington commemorating the 50th anniversary of a similar Civil Rights march.

Yet the two anniversaries are rooted in common values about equality and justice for all. They share common adversaries and aspirations. Racism and sexism are joined at the head.

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Leadership Video: Is this dance a movement or mob?

[Click title to see the nutty dancing video–Wordpress wonky editor won’t show it in the excerpt]

I love the virtual universe. In the blink of a mouse you can connect with a wide range of people who share your narrow set of interests. Social media Big Names like Seth Godin call this “finding your tribe.”

Tahrir Square…

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Breaking Barriers: Kentucky’s First Female African American Senator, Georgia Davis Powers

Kathy Groob, former elected city council member, publisher of ElectWomen Magazine, and partner at November Strategies political consulting firm contributed this inspiring article about Georgia Davis Powers, the first woman and first African American elected to the Kentucky state senate. It’s the first of a number of Women’s History Month guest posts I’m excited to share with 9 Ways readers.

At the time, Georgia Davis Powers had no idea she had made history in 1968 by becoming the first woman AND the first African-American elected to Kentucky’s State Senate. All she knew was that she wanted to make a difference in her community.

It was never her intention to become a politician, or even to work in government, but in the spring of 1962 Powers was introduced to politics upon the suggestion of fellow church member Verna Smith. Upon Ms. Smith’s advice she joined the U.S. Senatorial campaign staff of Wilson Wyatt. This led to six more years of managing mayoral, gubernatorial, and congressional campaigns. She also became heavily involved in the civil rights movement, leading the Allied Organization for Civil Rights in promoting statewide public accommodations and fair employment law in the early 1960’s. In 1964, she was one of the organizers of a march on the capital in Frankfort in support of equity in public accommodations, in which Dr. Martin Luther King and baseball legend Jackie Robinson participated.

In 1964 she was the first black woman elected to the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee. But after two years she resigned after becoming discouraged by the fact that the Committee had not discussed a single one of her proposals.

In 1966 she worked in the bill room during the legislative session for the Kentucky House of Representatives. This gave her the opportunity to see first hand how government functioned; as a result her political ambitions grew.

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What Movement Have You Started Today?

Thanks to Shelby Knox for posting this on Facebook today:

On this date in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, AL, city bus. Her arrest sparked the bus boycott and her courage fueled the burgeoning Civil Right Movement. Parks once said, “I want to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would also be free.” A beautiful goal, achieved by a revolutionary woman.

Parks helped to spark the Civil Rights Movement by this action. Over on my 9 Ways blog this week, I’m showing examples of No Excuses power tool #7: “create a movement”–with ways we can join together with others to do everything from planning Thanksgiving dinner to world-changing actions like Rosa Parks’.

Today is also World AIDS Day. It’s a good day to think about the amazing progress that has been made so that a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS is not the death warrant is was when the disease was first identified in the 1980’s, thanks to the many people who started movements large and small to combat the disease.

What movement have you created, joined, or contributed to lately? What movement do you think needs creating?

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