6/1/00
Via
pfaw.org/news
This
Year's 'Defenders of Democracy'
Awards
At
its annual awards luncheon in Washington
today, People For the American Way honored
four members of two families as "Defenders of
Democracy." Sharing the honors are siblings
Rep. Barney Frank (MA-4) and presidential
adviser Ann Lewis, along with the mother-son
team of Rep. Carrie Meek (FL-17) and Florida
state Senator Kendrick Meek.
"By
their words and their example, they remind us
all that the work of our democracy is never
done - and they give us the heart and spirit
to stay in the fight." said PFAW President
Ralph G. Neas.
U.S.
Representative Barney Frank (MA-4)
consistently leads the debate on issues
ranging from civil rights and education
reform to worker and environmental
protections, while his sister, Ann Lewis,
former Counsel to the President, has played a
key role in shaping public policy on a range
of issues. A well-known and highly respected
figure in Washington, Ms. Lewis has
previously served as Vice President for
Public Policy at the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, National Director for
Americans for Democratic Action, and
Political Director at the Democratic National
Committee.
U.S.
Representative Carrie Meek (FL-17), the first
African American elected to Congress from
Florida since Reconstruction, has emerged as
a strong advocate for minorities, senior
citizens and the working class. As a State
Senator, she developed much of Florida's
housing finance policy, which made home
ownership a reality for thousands of working
class families.
Her
son, Kendrick Meek, has used his position as
a Florida State Senator to successfully fight
for children and gun control, as well as
advocating for affirmation action. He is a
lifetime member of the NAACP and the founder
of MAD DADS, an anti-drug campaign.
Excerpted
from Press Release,
http://www.pfaw.org/news
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6/1/00
Excerpted
from Sonoma County Peace
Press
Bringing
Women to the Negotiating Table
Lynn
Woolsey, U.S. Representative for the Sonoma
County, California, area, wrote recently
about new legislation she is introducing to
Congress. Because "the threat of nuclear
weapons still hangs over us like a mushroom
cloud," Rep. Woolsey is introducing a bill,
H.R. 82, which "urges the President to bring
the international community together to
develop a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. What
we need is for all nations to meet
face-to-face, and to agree on how to rid our
planet of nuclear weapons," she wrote in the
June/July issue of the Sonoma County Peace
Press.
According
to Rep. Woolsey, "87% of Americans want the
United States to negotiate an agreement to
eliminate nuclear weapons and 84% said that
they would feel safer knowing that no nation,
including the United States, had nuclear
weapons."
Also,
she states, "In 1996, sixty retired generals
and admirals issued a statement declaring
that complete nuclear disarmament was
necessary and possible." Holding our
government accountable for pursuing this
avenue should be our first priority, "so that
we can leave a legacy of peace for our
children -- because the alternative is not
acceptable."
One
group that she is working with to implement
the change is "Women Waging Peace, an
international network based at Harvard
University that brings women from around the
world together to prevent conflict, stop war
and rebuild war-torn societies..., whose
members meet regularly to strategize on how
to make calls for peace heard over the clamor
for war."
Last
October she convened a panel in the US
Capitol where members of WWP told their
stories to a packed room of leaders and
activists, and she is helping to plan another
Capitol Hill event of the same kind for early
June.
Original
article from Sonoma County Peace
Press, June/July 2000
by Lynn Woolsey, U.S. Democratic
Representative for Marin-Sonoma, CA.
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6/17/00
Via
ABIGAILS-L@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
Women
of the Wall Status in Upheaval
In
an article for the Toronto Star
addressing the negative effects of right-wing
religious power on government, columnist
Michele Landsberg cites the case of the Women
of the Wall. She writes, "In May, the Israeli
Supreme Court ruled that women are entitled
to pray together at the Western Wall in
Jerusalem and that the government must
protect them from attacks by religious
extremists. Immediately, the Shas religious
party in parliament put forward a bill that
would punish , WITH SEVEN YEARS'
IMPRISONMENT, any woman who read from the
Torah and wore a prayer shawl."
In
1988 the first international Jewish Women's
Conference was held in Jerusalem. During the
time of the conference, "a group of Orthodox
women decided to pray at the Western Wall --
a site regarded as spiritually meaningful not
only because it is a last remnant of
Solomon's Temple, but because ancient lore
has it that the 'shekina', the indwelling
spirit of God, never left the place." (Ed.
note - the "shekina" is also traditionally
considered to be the feminine aspect of
God)
"The
Women of the Wall, in that first foray,
decorously gathered on the 'women's side' of
the barrier erected by the Orthodox to
segregate the sexes. The women dressed
'modestly', read rapturously from the holy
Torah and prayed according to traditional
rules.
"The
Orthodox men went berserk. They howled
obscenities, stood on chairs to peer over the
barrier (in violation of their own rules) and
then THREW the chairs. Despite physical mob
attacks -- and excrement hurled along with
violent insults -- the women have continued
to pray there solemnly every month for 11
years."
Landsberg
interviewed Rivka Haut, an Orthodox feminist
and a founder of the group, from her home in
Brooklyn, New York. "It's actually only the
Orthodox who truly understand the very
radical nature of what we are doing. If our
prayers are as important in the eyes of God,
if we can pray together without a male rabbi,
then they're afraid their 'own' women will
see that. This threatens to topple the whole
social structure of male authority in the
family and in Judaism."
Excerpted
from the original article by Michele
Landsberg, in the Toronto
Star
Editor's
note: the author requested that this article
be "widely posted"
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6/19/00
Via
ABIGAILS-L@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
A
Great Resolution for Congress from Women's
Enews
Whereas:
The nation is now realizing how extensive the
Boys-Will-Be Boys ethos compromised the New
York City police department's response on
June 11 to the 47 complaints by women that
they were being mauled, stripped and robbed
by gangs of thuggish young men;
Whereas,
reporter Mark Fazlollah has documented for
Women's Enews on June 15 that police
departments in Philadelphia and most likely
such other cities as New York, Houston and
Milwaukee, and perhaps others, often ignore
women's rape complaints;
Whereas,
the U.S. Senate as part of its campaign to
encourage women to marry and live with the
fathers of their children, all the while
claiming they are concerned about families
living in poverty and violent young men,
passed a resolution designating June 18 as
"Responsible Father's Day," calling upon
fathers around the country to use the day to
reconnect and rededicate themselves to their
children's lives;
Whereas,
good fathers don't need Congressional
resolutions;
Whereas,
it is extremely unlikely that such a
resolution has any noticeable affect on
estranged fathers, especially those behind on
their child support payments;
Whereas,
family violence leaves some children better
off disconnected from their fathers;
Whereas,
members of Congress who care about the
relations between women and men, could have
better spent their time pushing for the
reauthorization of the Violence Against Women
Act;
Whereas,
these same members who care about women and
children living in poverty could busy
themselves rewriting the welfare reform law
that thrust thousands of families into
poverty and left single mothers more
vulnerable to family violence;
We
call upon Congress to stop the pro-father
rhetoric and actually do something that will
send a strong message to young men in this
country that for boys to become men, they
must disavow violence and to rewrite the
welfare laws committing the nation's
resources to caring for its impoverished
children, again sending a strong message to
young men about the nature of responsibility.
Original
article by Rita Henley Jensen
Reprinted
with permission from http://www.womensenews.org
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6/21/00
Via
womensenews.org
Women's
Studies is Alive and Well!
The
National Women's Studies Association (NWSA)
held its 21st annual women's studies
conference recently at Simmons College in
Boston with more than 100 separate sessions,
papers, plenaries and exchanges of job
information. It is here that cutting edge
scholarship and feminist politics come
together, with 1,300 scholars, teachers and
students reaffirming their commitment to the
field and its "subversive"
character.
Among
the attendees were such well-known feminists
as Paula Gunn Allen, an outspoken Native
American scholar; Harvard University law
professor Lani Guinier, author of Becoming
Gentlemen: Women, Law School and
Institutional Change; Blanche Wiesen Cook,
biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt; journalist
Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our
Will: Men, Women and Rape, and In Our Times:
A Memoir of a Revolution; and Rita Arditti,
the author of Searching for Life: The
Grandmothers of the Plaza De Mayo and the
Disappeared Children of Argentina.
The
gathering was in part a celebration of a
field come to maturity in the past three
decades. Many side discussions focused on
tenure for women's studies professors and the
perennial worry about the survival of
programs, as colleges and universities cut
back on their liberal arts offerings and
reduce budgets.
Elise
Boulding, professor emerita at Dartmouth
College, spoke about gendered politics, war
and peace, echoing a theme from the recent
United Nations special session on women's
rights. Boulding reminded women's studies
activists that "security for women may be
very differently defined than security for
the nation state." Radha Khumar, author of
Divide and Fall: Bosnia in the Annals of
Partition who is a current member of the
Council on Foreign Relations,
agreed.
"Women
would bring a very different perspective to
solving ethnic conflicts," she said. "Instead
of taking sides, as U.N. peacekeepers tend to
do, we would be evacuating the males on both
sides of the conflict, which by itself would
end the wars."
The
National Women's Studies Association, founded
in 1977, now has 319 institutional members
and a new generation of students, some of
whom are daughters and granddaughters of
women's studies scholars and activists.
For
more information, contact the National
Women's Studies Association at:
http://www.nwfa.org
Original
article by Sheila Tobias, WEnews
Correspondent: http://www.womensenews.org
(Editor's
note: Tobias is a founding and an active
member of the National Women's Studies
Association).
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6/23/00
Via
AOL.com online news
Alternative
Therapy Adopted by Mainstream Hospitals
In
a report by the Associated Press, recently
posted online by AOL.com, we learn that
alternative medical treatments including
aromatherapy, acupuncture, massage therapy
and Tai Chi are now being tried in some major
American hospitals, such Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center, one of the most prestigious hospitals
in Los Angeles.
The
article reports that "Though the medical
profession remains skeptical about the
effectiveness of alternative therapies,
hospital administrators say they can no
longer escape the reality that millions of
Americans routinely use them to complement -
or even take the place of - traditional
medicine."
Dr.
Woodson Merrell of Beth Israel's Center for
Health and Healing, located in downtown
Manhattan, said in the article, "We are
providing a wide range of therapeutic options
of remedies that have stood the test of time
and/or scientific scrutiny, and preferably
both. I see integrative medicine as the
future of medicine.''
Another
doctor, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Gregory
Fontana, of Cedars-Sinai hospital, uses
acupuncture to relieve neck pain that he
developed from surgery and now uses it for
his patients. "As my practice evolved, I saw
the frustrations of my patients and came to
the realization that Western medicine does
not have all the answers,'' Fontana
said.
Even
in the usually conservative Midwest, a new
facility opened last year in West Des Moines,
Iowa, which employs alternative practitioners
who treat allergies with Chinese herbs and
back pain with acupuncture. Sheila Gregan,
the center's director, told the Associated
Press, "We give patients more of a comfort
level because they know we've checked out
these practitioners.''
Original
article by the Associated Press
posted
online by AOL.com news
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