Posts by Gloria Feldt
She's Doing It: Amy-Willard Cross Clicked Ruby Slippers, Founded Vitamin W Media
Amy-Willard Cross knew her historic mission and found her power to achieve it was right there, within her. She tells 9 Ways how and she founded the media company Vitamin W, “100% Kardashian-free.”
Knowing her personal history enabled Amy-Willard to create the future of her choice. How’s that for using the old Power Tool #1?
Read and be energized…then sign up right here for Vitamin W’s free newsletter and they’ll donate $1 to one of five fabulous women’s charities. Here’s Amy-Willard:
Gloria Feldt: When did you know you had the power to start a woman-owned media company? What did it feel like?
Amy-Willard Cross: I tried to start a magazine—a Pariscope kind of guide for LA. I was just out of college and had never worked at a magazine, so I got a partner. Soon, though, I gave up and took a regular starter job which turned into decades of working in magazines.
Fast forward to the mid-aughts. I started a site of women’s oped—thinking that, like Dooce, I’d put something up and the world and advertisers would flock to me…but I missed that boat by a few years.
After a few years of watching the not-for-profit feminist blogosphere, I determined that the world needed a woman-owned media property that would promote women in every respect—our businesses, our nonprofits, ALL our stories—and gather together the 11 million women who support women’s organizations into a powerful audience.
Read MoreShe’s Not Only Doing It; She’s Shaking, Baking and Moving It
My definition of leadership is someone who gets something done. Read on for the inspiring story of Ashley Riley who saw something that needed to get done and did it in her Silicon Valley community. And watch, I think Fit Kids will be coming to a schoolyard near you soon-maybe because you’ll be the leader to make it happen.
As we all prepare to overeat those Thanksgiving goodies, what better time to promote kids’ fitness?
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to pay homage and give thanks to Ashley Riley, one woman, a busy mom of four children under 11(!), who is “doing it” – that is, creating a movement to bring health and fitness through active play to all kids.
I met Ashley in late August of this year. It was kismet – my good fortune. I had decided to look for part-time “community organizer” work, and she was looking for someone to help with her 5th child, her precious baby, Fit Kids.
Ashley founded Fit Kids in January of 2011 based on a simple premise that healthy activity and food should not just be for the affluent kids on the west side of the Peninsula but a right of all kids – regardless of ethnicity and socioeconomic or immigration status.
“Why?” Ashley pondered, “should a child born on this side of Highway 101 have different access to healthy activity and nutrition than their brothers and sisters in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park (aka Belle Haven)?
Read MoreMargaret and I Did It: My Interview with Sanger Papers Project
The post-election buzz is all about how 2012 was a pivotal year, the demographic shift toward non-white voters and millennials finally kicked in, women finally exercised their electoral power, and yada yada. This is true, and we deserve to celebrate for a few minutes.
But elections come and go, pendulums swing, and no shift happens by itself—people have to make it happen.
That’s why social movements are forever, if they remain relevant and keep them. I was honored to be interviewed by NYU’s Margaret Sanger Papers Project regarding my views of the woman who started the American Birth Control Movement and the organization that would become Planned Parenthood, her work, and what I learned from her leadership. Here you go—let me know what you think.
Gloria Feldt: I relate to the hardships of young parents. I have been driven by a passion that my daughters and all future generations of women should have the information, aspiration, and access to birth control and abortion services that give them the ability to determine the course of their own lives. Like Margaret Sanger, I believe biology should not be destiny and no woman can call herself free till she can own and control her own body. The birth control pill represented that liberation for me. It enabled me to start college and build a career. And to become financially independent–economic justice is the second factor, after reproductive rights, women must have to be full and equal citizens, but you can’t have that unless you can make your own sexual and childbearing decisions.
Read MoreSex and the Married General: 3 Reasons Petraeus Had to Go
When CIA director David Petraeus stepped down from his post, citing an extramarital affair, the political birds of prey immediately started talking about who should replace him. And the usual battleground map was drawn.
On the one side are those who say any leader caught in such a compromising position has to go. On the other side are those who contend private consensual sexual behavior is just that and as long as it is not interfering with a leader’s ability to do the job, it should not factor into whether he or she remains in power.
Petraeus’s romance with his biographer and former military officer, Paula Broadwell, is hardly a new circumstance in American politics.
General Dwight Eisenhower had a well-known affair with his driver while commanding the US Army in Europe, and this did not prevent him from becoming president. Franklin Roosevelt had a long-running affair with Lucy Mercer while he was president without any hints that he should resign the presidency. JFK was a well-known womanizer, including in the White House. And then of course there is Bill Clinton who despite his foolish high risk dalliance with Monica Lewinsky handily won reelection and remains (perhaps second only to his wife) the most popular politician in the country.
So you might think I am going to defend Petraeus. Most definitely not, for three reasons.
Read MoreTwo Generations Dissect Election 2012 and What’s Next for Women’s Rights
On election night, journalism major Maegan Vazquez joined about one hundred fellow New York University students over the beer soaked floorboards of Brad’s, a popular site for locals and college 20-somethings alike. Keenly interested in politics, she’s been writing a terrific weekly column for my Heartfeldt Blog, titled “The Young Politica.”
Across town, I chatted with a couple dozen men and women at my friend Loretta’s Upper East Side apartment. As guests slipped into spaces on the elegant couch and chairs, like the old game of Sardines, each sighed, “I’m so nervous about the outcome of this election.”
Nov. 7, 2012 – New York, USA – Young women celebrate the result of the 2012 US Presidential election at Times Square in New York, USA, 07 November 2012. Democratic President Obama defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the US elections. Photo: Rainer Jensen (Credit Image: © Rainer Jensen/DPA/ZUMAPRESS.com)
The pundits had us convinced that what turned out to be a rout would be a cliffhanger.
Read MoreIn Which I Answer POLITICO Arena’s Election Day Question: What were the campaigns’ biggest mistakes?
A friend posted a photo on Facebook of a long line at her polling place this morning with the comment that “it’s a good sign when voters are treating an election like Black Friday at Walmart.” Now we have to wait all day to learn which of the candidates brought forth this outpouring of interest: do voters think Obama or Romney is the better bargain?
Both campaigns have made mistakes galore, balancing each other out in about the same horserace numbers as the daily polls have recently shown the race to be. Romney’s worst was hoisting himself on his own petard of Etch-a-Sketch positions, thus eroding voter trust, then nailing his coffin with the deliberately false Jeep ad.
Obama’s worst mistake was four years in the making. He failed to run, as Harry Truman successfully did, against the “do nothing Congress” that is more at fault for the lack of economic progress than the president who at least put forward some ideas. He had to re-energize many discouraged 2008 supporters as a result. But thanks to the Republican War on Women which Romney could not separate himself from, Obama was able to seize a set of issues that resonate with progressive women who make up almost 60% of the Democratic base.
Romney’s mistakes were mistakes of character and likability; Obama’s were mistakes of leadership style.
Read MoreOutsider Fits No Political Box, but Declares Choice Because “I Hope It Gets Better”
This is a powerful personal essay guest post on American culture and politics from my colleague, Tamara Fagin. Her title was “Random Musings From the Frontline” but I don’t think it’s random at all. I believe most Americans feel like outsiders at some time in their lives, and who have had the experience of being bullied or feeling like we have been treated unfairly because of our birth origins.
We are a nation of diverse heritages, a salad bowl of tossed differences rather than a melting pot where we all blend in together.
How does Fagin tie her personal experience as a one-woman salad bowl of cultures who always felt “different” with how she came to choose a candidate for president? Read on…and tell us your experiences.
All or for much of my life I have felt like an outsider. Bullied in a sense for giving a damn. I have early memories of eye-rolling, smirks or quiet taunts. This was not the punching, hair-pulling, tripping garden variety of physical bullying and worse, rather the insidious kind that eats at one’s insides and makes one eat lunch in the high school bathroom (it was clean and a friend joined me).
It was the one-off comment from the popular, All-American high school cheerleader that goes unanswered by one’s peers and one’s teacher. When I answered a question in A.P. U.S. History class, our teacher asked the class, “Why can’t you guys answer that question? Tamara just moved here from Japan.“ The cute blonde cheerleader girl shouted, “She’s an import!” I can’t remember what happened after that.…
I just remember that I wished that we were back in Japan. And, I wished that she knew the deal. But, c’est la vie or shikataganai, as the Japanese say.
Note to Mr. M.: you should have called her on that. You should have never made that comment to the class about me being able to answer the question. I was new to the school. I was miserable. I missed my old school, my old friends, my old beaches, my old Japanese nightclubs, my old routine and I missed Okinawa, Japan.
Note to educators everywhere: you make the bullying problem worse when you do this kind of comparison thing. It doesn’t work for parents when they say to their kids, “Why can’t you be more like your big brother, Johnny?” Why the hell do you think it is going to make your domestic darlings try harder? It just doesn’t. It breeds resentment. It pits us against them. U.S. blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful against different. But, to borrow a phrase from my LGBT brothers and sisters, IT GETS BETTER.
Read MoreIf Obama Wins Ohio, Fair Voting and Jennifer Brunner Get Credit
My grandparents were all immigrants from tyrant-ruled Eastern Europe during the early decades of the 20th century. They treasured their voting rights as only new citizens can, and they instilled in me their almost sappy love of the American ideals of liberty, justice, and fairness.
Having struggled to get to their promised land, they considered voting their sacred duty. Every election, no matter what. They weren’t naïve about politics, nor did they expect their favored candidates to win every time. They just wanted their votes counted honestly and their voices heard fairly.
They would have loved Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s first female Secretary of State who served from 2007-2011. She’s a true American hero for cleaning up the state’s election system after its 2004 debacle, one that is remembered as one of the most sordid chapters in our nation’s history.
Read MoreThey’re Doing It: Teen Activists Madison and Rhiannon Take on Girl Scouts to Save Orangutans
Raise your hand if you were a Girl Scout. Give the Girl Scout Sign if you ever sold Girl Scout cookies. Say “Yum!” if you have ever eaten a Girl Scout cookie.
Many of us have fond memories of Scouting, and I recall the year my father chaired the local cookie drive and stuffed our freezer with twelve dozen boxes. But I’ll bet every one of you said “Yum!” And you have your favorite. I love to curl up with a box of shortbreads, a cup of tea, and a good book.
But who knew these delicious morsels carried within them an unexpected ingredient: death to one of the most adorable animals on Earth, orangutans? Until these two courageous young women, Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, took the issue of unsustainably harvested palm oil head on. Read their inspiring story:
Gloria Feldt: When did you know you had the power to_____? Describe the moment or series of events that let you know you had the power to_____. What did it feel like?
Madison: I knew that I had the power to change Girl Scouts USA’s palm oil policy as soon as I made the connection that unsustainable palm oil which results in deforestation, the endangerment of thousands of species and human rights abuses was an ingredient in the Girl Scout cookies I had sold since childhood. At eleven years old, I didn’t know how I would accomplish this goal, but my passion and conviction led to unrelenting action.
Read MoreFaith-based Support for Abortion Rights
The Gallup poll is showing abortion as the #1 voting issue for women in key swing states, with the economy second. Though the pollster didn’t indicate whether the female registered voters polled were pro or anti choice, it’s clear there is a heightened awareness of the consequences of a Romney/Ryan presidency as well as the…
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