Women Are All In For Kamala Harris!

We’re excited at the news that Kamala Harris will be the first woman of color to be nominated for Vice President.   Here’s my statement about this historic choice. 

Feminist leaders like Kamala Harris know that the coronavirus crisis has revealed endemic and systemic failures of equity, fairness and opportunity. 

For example, women have been spending more time than men doing unpaid work during the coronavirus pandemic, according to research, but according to this article, the time use surveys being used to make these calculations are an often-overlooked method of data collection that may lead to a deeper understanding of women’s unpaid work. 

When it comes to how our economy has failed working mothers, the facts have been clear for a long, long time.  Writing in TIME, author Lyz Lenz describes how the pandemic has made it clear what needs to change about motherhood in America.   

“American mothers have been the under supported cog in the wheel of American capitalism for too long… We must now completely reimagine their role and start over.” 

Poetry is another way to ask and answer important questions about the lives we lead, and I was inspired to come across this account of Untold Stories of Liberation & Love, a project from women of color poets based in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The editor of the anthology, Julie Quiroz wrote to participating writers inviting them to join a “shared shelter-in-place poetry project.” One of the poems she received was “Aunties” by Nuola Akinde, where she writes of her need for community: 

I’ve lived enough to know 

That I don’t know enough 

to help us survive this 

alone

That’s how I feel too.  Another source of comfort, inspiration, and strength for me is music.  I was fascinated by this article in the New York Times about a long-forgotten female composer named Ethel Smyth, who was the first woman to have a work performed by the Metropolitan Opera, in 1903, before she devoted more of her time to “the militant wing of British suffragists.” 

“When the conductor Thomas Beecham visited her at Holloway Prison in London, where she spent three weeks in 1912 for throwing rocks at a politician’s house, he found inmates singing her anthem, “March of the Women,” while she conducted with a toothbrush.” 

Finally, a little more music.  Here’s a video of a cello solo the likes of which you’ve never seen before! 

That’s what I’ve been looking at this week—how about you?  I hope you’re staying inspired, staying determined, and staying strong.