JUNE 2013

Abolitionist: a person who favors the abolition of a practice or institution, esp. capital punishment or (formerly) slavery.

Just returned from a performance in New York City for The Coalition Against Trafficking In Women

Coalition Against Trafficking In Women.

The event was inspired by CATW’s continuing efforts to bring awareness of and attention to MODERN DAY slavery, which is sex trafficking.  Director Norma Ramos (who saw a performance of SHE’S HISTORY! last year at The Museum of Motherhood – http://museumofmotherhood.org/,  saw – as she put it –  “the power of  artistry” to shine a light on a very dark subject.  So she put me together with Stacey Robertson (visit her website here:  Stacey Robertson), historian, author and educator.  Her latest book – an inspired historical work: Hearts Beating for Liberty, brings attention to the key leadership of women in the Abolitionist movement in the 1800’s. Norma asked me to bring to life some of the abolitionist women in SHE’S HISTORY! (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony…) as a collaboration with Stacey.  Inspired by this idea, Stacey created a play of sorts where she read from her book, I performed excerpts of MY play, and a wonderful actor named Alberto Bonilla read speeches that Stacey chose, of Abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

It WAS very powerful.

 

catw aftershowmovie

 

We learned about how CATW and Equality Now, got legislation that passed the Trafficking Victims Protection & Justice Act in New York.

25 JUNE 2013 UPDATE – In a positive step for 16 and17 year-old sex trafficking victims, on 22 June, the New York State legislature passed a bill extending its Safe Harbor Law to cover all prostituted individuals under the age of eighteen (previously only victims aged 15 and under were covered). Now, 16 and 17 year-old victims who are arrested for prostitution will be classified as trafficking victims, thereby allowing them to access treatment services rather than jail time. Their criminal records will also be sealed so as not to penalize them further while they rebuild their lives. Equality Now congratulates Assemblywoman Amy Paulin and Senator Andrew Lanza for their incredible work in ensuring passage of this bill during this legislative session.  

Read more here… Equality Now

Norma spoke about how easy it is for girls to get into prostitution and how it is to hard to get out.  The work they do is incredibly heartbreaking, important and so difficult as most people have no idea that modern day slavery still exists.

*********************************

JUNE  2013

Who said: “We want a woman schlemiel to get promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.”

It was the one and only former Congresswomen Bella Abzug, a fabulous trailblazing female who I can never say enough about.  (read a bit about her here… http://sheshistory.com/site/category/fabulous-female-facts/page/4/.

In 1961 Bella (and Dagmar Wilson) created Women Strike For Peace which was part of the movement to end the Vietnam War AND to end nuclear testing.  On Bella’s very first day on the job as Congresswoman in 1970, she tried to get the troops out of Vietnam.

She comes to mind this June 2013 for several reasons.  As the controversy rages on about the NSA and the Government keeping secrets, The Pentagon Papers is in the discussion.  Just for a refresher;

The Pentagon Papers were papers that contain a history of our political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.   Daniel Ellsberg (a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies) decided – on his own – to give them to the New York Times.  It was eventually revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public, and that Lyndon Johnson’s Administration had lied to Congress and the American people.

In 1971, Bella Abzug, got the Pentagon Papers to the floor of The House of Representatives using the Resolution of Inquiry.  She testified before the Armed Services Committee demanding the Pentagon Papers, and had quite the role in having them released.  She also helped write the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, laws that restrict the right of the Federal Bureau of Information to withhold information.

Just a few Fabulous Female Facts for ya…

 

Photo Credit: Swarthmore Library Collection

*************************************************

What I love about SHE’S HISTORY! The Most Dangerous Women In America…Then And Now, is bringing to life the fabulous females that make – and have made – our world better.  And through this work I get to meet all kinds of fabulous females who continue the work of the gals whose shoulders we stand on.  Norma Ramos is one of them.  She is the Director of The Coalition Against Trafficking In Women

http://www.catwinternational.org/ and saw a performance last year in New York City of SHE’S HISTORY! at The Museum Of Motherhood http://museumofmotherhood.org/ (envisioned and realized by another fabulous female – Joy Rose).

 

 

Norma invited me to perform excerpts of the show in collaboration with yet ANOTHER fabulous female, Stacey Robertson, celebrating her book about abolition women Hearts Beating For Liberty http://www.staceymrobertson.com/.  I am honored to participate but sad that we still have to work to end human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children worldwide. CATW is the world’s first organization to fight human trafficking internationally and is the world’s leading abolitionist organization.

 

*************************************************

June is the month we honor our fathers.  Check out my Hollywood Journal blog about my fabulous father : http://hollywoodjournal.com/personal-journeys/just-here-on-a-pass/20130612/

 

*************************************************

For anyone is Los Angeles, ANOTHER fabulous female – my great friend and colleague Wendy Hammers has a SUPER UBERFABULOUS totally inspiring, life affirming and hysterically funny solo show about embracing life, called RIPE.  GO SEE IT!!!!!

RIPE The Play

TWO NIGHTS ONLY
THURSDAY, JUNE 27TH at 8PM

SATURDAY, JULY 6th at 8PM

www.greenwayartsalliance.org

*************************************************

Don’t forget – (Fifteen Minute Segments) Fabulous Female Facts every Wednesday 8:15AM Pacific Time on Nicole Sandler’s http://radioornot.com/.  It’s archived, and you can hear a few here:

 

http://sheshistory.com/site/media/audio/

*************************************************

Bella Abzug had two daughters.  So do I.  My daughters are and have been my inspiration.  They are now sixteen and twenty.  My oldest, Rose, will enter her third year of college (about an hour away from me – yay!) and my youngest, Ruby, decided when she was fifteen, to go live with her father in London.  Ahhhh.  We give them roots and wings and when they fly away…I am happy for her to have this wonderful experience of living and learning abroad, but my heart…oh my heart….

 

This puts me three years ahead of schedule.  I’m at a transitional time of my life…an unexpected empty nester.  For the first time in twenty years I get to make decisions based on MY needs – not my children’s.

 

(For fun I told my Rose I was gonna join the Peace Corps – a beyond noble choice – and because I am SUCH a good actress – she believed me.  Ha! I don’t have what it takes to join the Peace Corps!)

 

Bella Abzug was elected to Congress at the age of fifty.  And she kicked ass! Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had SEVEN kids, wrote (along with Susan B. Anthony and other of her her BFFs) The History Of Woman Suffrage at the age of seventy-two.  At the age of eighty, she wrote The Woman’s Bible.  Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of sixty-nine. Eleanor Roosevelt co-authored The Declaration of Human Rights for the United Nations at the age of sixty-four.  I could go on.  When women, who raise humans for a good part of their adult lives, find themselves child-free, they are FINALLY FREE to devote themselves to…whatever they want.  If they are financially able of course….

 

I will be fifty-seven this summer.  And I am just getting started…..

 

I will devote myself to continuing to try and support myself writing and performing about the women who inspire me.  What these women – and men – do – and have done – is SO important and is the message I try and leave my audience with at the end of SHE’S HISTORY! 

 

Repair The World.  It Needs It.

 

 

 

 

 

March is Women’s History Month. Most people don’t know that. And THAT is shocking.

In honor of women, PBS has aired a fantastic three hour documentary called MAKERS.COM – “a digital platform developed by AOL, showcasing hundreds of compelling stories from women of today and tomorrow.” What a great idea! (You can watch the entire show on their website http://www.makers.com/). The show is loaded with fabulous females telling their true horrifying and inspiring stories such as Oprah telling a story of how in 1980, she was co-hosting a Baltimore TV show and earning $22,000 and learned her male co-host was earning $50,000. When she complained to her boss, he asked why she should make that much and she told him “because we are doing the same job”. He argued with her and defended the male co-host, saying he had a family to support and bills to pay. Oprah said she knew she couldn’t make a big stink or she would be blackballed. She just thought; “I’ll show him”. And that’s when she got the idea to have her OWN show. Watch that interview here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/about-oprah-winfrey-life-history- makers_n_2760337.html

Of course Oprah has gone on to make amazing “women’s history”, and sadly there are TONS of stories like this, but first – a little History…about Women’s History Month, an idea inspired by a question posed by a boy. There are plenty of men who have helped – and continue to help – women achieve equality. And there are plenty of women who have opposed – and continue to oppose – women achieving equality. Phyllis Schlafly pretty much single-handedly organized women AND men to stop the Equal Rights Amendment from being passed. HER story is in the MAKERS.COM show.

It was a man – Victor Hugo who said: “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

The idea of Women’s History Month started in 1972 when a high school student in Los Angeles, taking a U.S. History class, asked his teacher a question. “What is the Woman’s Movement?” He was introduced to THAT idea when he saw a copy of the brand new Ms. Magazine.Molly McGregor, twenty-six year old history freak was this boy’s teacher. Molly said she was glad the boy asked her this question on a Friday, because she needed the weekend to come up with the answer. So she said to the boy “that’s a good question”.

She went home and looked through her vast collection of history books to find some information, and to her dismay and disgust, found ONE book with ONE chapter, on Seneca Falls – a dusty upstate New York town where the very first Woman’s Convention was held in 1848. That’s when a seed was planted and Molly McGregor got the idea to bring Women’s History and Women’s struggles and accomplishments into the schools, and consciousness of America. She was not alone.

In 1966 actress Marlo Thomas, tired of being offered roles as “the wife of somebody”, or “the daughter of somebody” or “the secretary of somebody”, went to the head of ABC and said, “it’s time for a woman to be the somebody.” What a radical idea! Then she pulled a copy of Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking The Feminine Mystique out of her purse and handed it to him. “This is where it’s going”, she said. And Marlo Thomas, became a trailblazer – the producer and star of That Girl, a show about a single woman living alone pursuing a career in New York City. Watch that interview here: http://collider.com/marlo-thomas-makers-women-who-make-america-interview/.

She tell this story on the MAKERS.COM documentary which is narrated by Meryl Streep, who played Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the film Iron Lady. Ms. Streep donated ONE MILLION DOLLARS of her Iron Lady salary to help build a Women’s History Museum on the National Mall in Washington. “Any woman who understands the problems of running a home, is that much nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”, said Ms. Thatcher, when she was making history running England.

Back in 1848 in Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the “Architect of the Woman’s Movement” drafted a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after The Declaration Of Independence, in which she proposed that “all men AND WOMEN” are created equal. She then had the audacity to insist that women be given suffrage – the right to vote. It was a shocking and radical idea. She and her buddy, famed and revered abolitionist Frederick Douglass, managed to get The Declaration of Sentiments published in the New York Herald and all hell broke loose. They called it: The Most Shocking And Unnatural Incident Ever Recorded In The History Of Womanity!

It took until 1920 for women in this country to get the right to vote. THAT is shocking!.

March 8th is International Woman’s Day. Some people DO know this, but probably don’t know it grew out of a declaration made in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America demanding equal rights – such as voting – for women.

In 1978, Molly McGregor creates a “Sexism In Education” course that she is teaching in Sonoma, California and gets the idea for a whole week to celebrate Women’s History, to coincide with International Women’s Day – March 8th. She takes her idea to the folks in charge of ALL the school districts, “an easy easy sell”, she says, and it turns out to be a fabulously successful and exciting week. Her idea catches the attention of Gerda Lerner, the fabulous female pioneering scholar with a doctorate in history (who is responsible for bringing women’s history into the academic world). Ms. Lerner took Molly McGregor’s idea for Women’s History Week to some of her friends who happen to be friends with President Carter. Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski (who holds the record as the longest serving woman in Congress!) and Republican Orrin Hatch (a man!) get behind it, lobbying takes place, and in 1980 the President makes the Declaration and the rest is…..herstory. ((It was in 1987 that the whole month of March was declared)

Today, Molly McGregor is as busy as ever. Back in 1980, she founded The National Women’s History Project (http://www.nwhp.org/) which inspired me to create SHE’S HISTORY! As a performer listed on her website, I got my first booking when I was hired by The Equal Opportunity Program for The Bulldog Brigade at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. They went to the NWHP looking for a speaker to celebrate Women’s History Month.

What’s really shocking though is that in 2013, women STILL EARN ONLY SEVENTY SEVEN CENTS TO THE MAN’S DOLLAR, and women running for public office are still being asked how they will manage as an elected official and a mother. (Watch the Makers interview here http://www.makers.com/pat-schroeder) Back in 1972, Pat Schroeder, running for Congress, was asked how SHE would manage. Her response: “I have a brain and a uterus and they both work”. MAKES sense.

Read more about how Molly did it here:

http://www.nwhp.org/whm/history.php