Madonna & Me Charity Reading
Book Reading Event
Madonna and Me Charity Reading
Susan Shapiro hosts a Madonna and Me charity reading at Barnes & Noble.
(Bullet bras welcome)
Join Laura Barcella, Emily Nussbaum, Wendy Shanker, Gloria Feldt & Susan Shapiro as they read from the anthology “Madonna & Me.”
10% of book sales to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen
Editor Laura Barcella and I read our essays from the anthology “Madonna and Me” – Like a Virgin and all that
March 23, 2012, Friday, 7:30-9pm.
396 Avenue of the Americas at 8th Street, Greenwich Village, NYC.
(Click here to read the event details)
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Soundtrack Series: March Maddness Madonnathon
Book Reading Event
March Maddness Madannathon
March Maddness Madonnathon from Soundtrack Series. I join other guest writers reading my essay from Laura Barcella’s new anthology, Madonna and Me.
March 22, 2012 – Thursday, 7-9:30 pm. Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleeker Street, NYC
(Click here to read event details)
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She’s Doing It: What Courtney Martin Learned This Year
Read MoreWhen I speak on college campuses, I score points with students when they find out I know Courtney Martin, author, among several books, of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and Do It Anyway. Though she’s the youngest of the four of us on the WomenGirlsLadies intergenerational feminist panel, she is usually the most together. The one who knows where we’re supposed to be when, gets the power point together, and remains calm when things go awry.
Follow Courtney @courtwrites and find her commentaries on The American Prospect and many other publications. Courtney is the Founding Director of the Solutions Journalism Network, along with New York Times columnist David Bornstein. In addition, she is the leader of the Op-Ed Project’s Public Voices Fellowship Program at Princeton University–coaching women academics to become part of public debate. She is a partner in Valenti Martin Media, a communications consulting firm focused on making social justice organizations more effective in movement building and making change and is an Editor Emeritus at Feministing.com.
Here’s what Courtney says she learned since I interviewed her for No Excuses:
Can Rick Santorum Ban Porn?
Politico Arena asks:
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has promised to wage war on pornography, the Christian Science Monitor reports. http://bit.ly/yPdOaW
If elected, he would order his attorney general to “vigorously enforce” existing laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”
Could Santorum turn this topic into a successful campaign strategy? Or does the idea step on First Amendment rights?
My Response: Rick Santorum has just laid bare (so to speak) one more layer of a debate about the nature and purpose of human sexuality that he is sure to lose. Not because porn is a good thing—and of course existing laws should be enforced, duh—but because when push comes to shove, the American people don’t want government telling them what to read or watch or do in their private sex lives. What they do want is jobs and an economy that works again. And voters are very likely to connect Santorum’s focus on pornography with his overall sex police-like attacks on contraception and women’s rights.
Read MoreLesser-Known Women Often Make History
Today in the Women’s History Month series, let’s shine a light on lesser known women. 
In the spirit of the month, here are links to articles drawing attention to women you may not have heard of—and the awesome things they are doing today.
- Anna Clark has compiled a list of underrated women writers of novels, stories, poems, and graphic novels from around the globe.
- The BBC has profiled some of the women activists involved in Syria’s uprising.
- Bitch Flicks recommends 11 films about trailblazing women.
- Houston Press lists ten of their favorite Female Artists making music today. Rock on ladies!
NCJW Leader's Retreat
Keynote Speaking Event
NCJW Leadership Training Retreat: Focus on Leadership Plenary Keynote address
NCJW leaders from around the country gathered from March 16–18 in Florham Park, NJ for a weekend of learning and networking at NCJW Leaders’ Retreat 2012.
This hands-on leadership training retreat gave current and future NCJW leaders the opportunity to boost their leadership skills to build and grow a successful NCJW section.
On Saturday, I delivered the Focus on Leadership Plenary Keynote address. Hamutal Gouri, Executive Director of The Dafna Fund, delivered the Focus on Israel Plenary Keynote address.
March 17, 2012 – NCJW Leaders’ Retreat 2012 “Focus on Leadership”, Plenary Keynote speaker. Florham Park, NJ
(Click here to read event details)
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BETTY, The Workshop Series
H2>Book Reading Event
BETTY, The Workshop Series
Great crowds at 92YTribeca for BETTY and me reading from No Excuses set to music!
BETTY, The Workshop Series featuring a musical collaboration with special guest Gloria Feldt.
“Imagine! No Excuses set to music and me reading with the fabulous BETTY singing backup!”
Media Buzz
Here’s a nice piece on the concert and a conversation we had afterward, written by Examiner’s Jim Bessman
Check out the great Event Pics
(Click here to read event details)
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Aung San Suu Kyi Says Value Change Over Regime Change
“Regime change can be temporary, but value change is a long-term business. We want the values in our country to be changed.”
As a contemporary figure making women’s history, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi reflects the kind of ‘power-to’ leadership which is truly earth shattering.
“Regime change can be temporary,” she says, “but value change is a long-term business. We want the values in our country to be changed. “
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is the leading pro-democracy opposition leader in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, one of the world’s most isolated and repressive nations.
Since a military junta grabbed power of the country in 1962, it has secured its power by rigging elections and suppressing opposition. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 of the last 20 years under house arrest after her party, the National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming victory in the 1990 elections but was denied power. In November 2010 elections, Myanmar’s main military-backed party won in a vote again engineered to assure the military’s continued grip on power. The National League of Democracy boycotted this election and called it what it was—undemocratic.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi—who was released from house-arrest November of 2010—and her party, the National League for Democracy, have chosen to participate in elections this time around. On April 1 of this year, Suu Kyi and other pro-democratic candidates will run for 47 of the 48 open seats in Parliament.
Her campaign speech, which will appear on National TV, will mark the first time the Nobel Peace laureate has been given the opportunity to use state media to promote her party’s platform. She calls for amending the 2008 constitution,
Read MoreWear The Shirt And Make Women’s History
“Well behaved women rarely make history” ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
I often wear a t-shirt bearing historian Ulrich’s advice because people react with a chuckle and it starts conversations. Conversations we need because women’s history is rarely given its due.
March is Women’s History Month, so designated because history has largely been framed through the male lens, recorded by male pens, and thus not surprisingly showcases men as the protagonists and the leaders; women, if noticed at all, play supporting roles (unless of course they take “male” personas, such as generals).
Yet women were everywhere, giving birth to everyone, among many other accomplishments. I’ve often wondered whether, if women had been documenting history for the last millennium, keeping peace and making things rather than making war and destroying things would be the central organizing narrative.
Then, once history is made, it seems so normal that it can easily be taken for granted. When I asked my grandson if he would vote for a woman for president, he responded “Yeaaah” in that drawn out way that made it sound as though I had three heads to ask such a dumb question.
And Sunday’s New York Times front page boasted a photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde—with little comment about what a power shift those two symbolize. Yet, as Lagarde said at the recent Women in the World conference, the global financial meltdown might not have occurred if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters—or at least Lehman Brothers and Sisters. History has consequences for the future.
Women’s History: A Revolutionary Shift
Read MoreFrom Olympe de Gouges to Women Demanding Rights Worldwide
“A woman has the right to mount the scaffold. She must possess equally the right to mount the rostrum [speaker’s platform].”
Olympe de Gouges was an 18th Century French playwright and political activist way ahead of her time, and her feminist and abolitionist writings stirred political discourse in ways that presaged uprisings by women around the world last week.
Disenchanted when equal rights were not extended to women after the outbreak of the French Revolution, Olympe de Gouges wrote a Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. Modeled on the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen by the National Assembly, De Gouges’ Declaration echoed the same language, replacing ‘Man’ with ‘Woman’.
De Gouges argued that the rights revolutionaries were attempting to expand for men should be extended to women as well. She passionately insisted upon universal suffrage, legal equality in marriage, women’s right to divorce in cases of abuse and her right to property and custody of her children, among other things. In her postscript, Gouges exhorted women to awaken to consciousness of their rights to embrace their power. She encouraged them to step up, take action and demand equality.
Sound familiar?
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