The AFL-CIO is launching the Turn Around America Online Video Competition to engage and inspire people like you from across the country to tell us how they’d turn our country around.

Click here to submit your short video today.

Most winners will receive cash prizes and selected videos will be featured in television ads.

We received these passover reflections from poet, writer and historian Aurora Levins Morales. We asked her to share them with you. Aurora and her mom Rosario were both members of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.

Dear Friends: Like other Jews around the world, I am preparing for Passover, our annual feast in celebration of freedom. I've been cleaning house, chopping nuts and fruit, and if I were not allergic to wheat anyway, I'd be getting rid of my bread. But in the midst of this work that I love, I can't get my mind off all the people who are taking to the streets this month, in country after country, to demand changes in the food policies that are starving them. The prices of wheat, rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples have skyrocketed in the last three years and hundreds of millions of people can't afford to eat them. Although the Haitian people's protests brought down their government, people are still eating patties made of salted mud.

Anyone who has ever had a conversation with a know-it-all knows how flustering and frustrating that can be. But somehow, the know-it-all man comes equipped his own special brand of arrogance and aggravation.

In her blog post entitled "Men Explain Things to Me" over at AlterNet , Rebecca Solnit relates her experiences with men who hold forth with great authority on subjects that they know nothing about.

Poet, essayist and activist Adrienne Rich will appear in Northeastern Illinois University's (NEIU) Presidential Lecture Series. Since receiving the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1951 at the age of 21, Adrienne Rich has not stopped writing in her distinct voice, with strength and conviction.This event is free and open to the public

Fine Arts Center Recital Hall, Northeastern Illinois University
5500 N. Saint Louis Ave in Chicago
(Use campus entrance located at 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) Free parking in Lot F
Thursday, April 24 at 8 p.m

Labor singer Anne Feeney's new cd "Dump the Bosses off Your Back" is now available at CDBaby and Anne assures us that its her best cd yet. For those of you unfamiliar with Anne Feeney's music, you are in for a real treat. If you don't believe me, head on over to her website and listen to some of her MP3's. Anne Feeney is “the best labor singer in North America,” according to Utah Phillips. Based in her hometown Pittsburgh, PA, Anne is on the road more than 200 days a year, singing in union halls, on picket lines, at rallies, riots, folk clubs, festivals, conferences, conventions and colleges.

When did feminism become the "F" word in todays modern world? Film maker Therese Schecter tries to answer that question in her movie, 'I was a Teenage Feminist". Armed with interviews and music by Ani DiFranco, Gina Young, Moxie Starpark and Helen Reddy, the film has earned great reviews from Bitch Magazine, Yahoo Movies, Educational Media Review and our good friend Paula Kamen.

To view the entire film online, please visit Free Speech TV. For more info on how to purchase the film or to arrange a showing, please visit Trixie Films.

You can watch a preview clip below:

The Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls is a place where 8-18 year olds come from all over the country to learn Rock DIY-style--forming bands, writing songs and building community, and “Girls Rock !” is the movie about their journey.

Film makers Arne Johnson and Shane King  have put together a story that focuses on 4 girls  at the camp learning how to be the people they really are as they make a whole lot of joyful noise.

The film opens in Chicago at the Music Box Theater at 3733 North Southport.

Call for contributions for an edited essay collection on Marjane Satrapi’s works (film, literature, and art).

Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis, was an instant success in France and the U.S. It has garnered numerous book prizes, and the animated film version was awarded the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Satrapi's other texts, including children's books, have been translated into numerous languages and published worldwide.

The proposed collection aims to examine Satrapi's works as literature, art, film and cultural phenomena, bringing diverse ideological and theoretical perspectives to bear on the intellectual and political issues that they raise.

Some of you may remember when the Herstory Project was contacted about being on the ABC TV show Wife Swap, when moms get to change families. They wanted a "feminist" and we politely ignored them.

Well apparently they found their feminist if the season premiere is any indication. For the terminally curious, you can see a preview here. It's feminist mom vrs. spoiled teenage beauty pageant princess.

Oh joy. 

I'm reminded of what Gandhi once said about Western Civilization,"I think it would be a good idea."

Labor singer Anne Feeney would love to finish her new CD "Dump the Bosses Off Your Back", but is still short of $$$. If you can help, send $100 to Anne Feeney, 2240 Milligan Ave, Pittsburgh, PA. She'll put your name on the liner notes as a TY.

Anne will be leading 3 music/history/politics and poetry tours of western Ireland in 2008 and there are still seats available. Check out Anne's website for more trip info as well as news about her life and music. She has some great audio clips for your listening enjoyment.

This came to my e-mail box and it really made me think, so I decided to share it. I have no idea who wrote it, but thanks to my friend Gail for sending it to me.

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A young wife sat on a sofa on a hot humid day, drinking iced tea and visiting with her Mother. As they talked about life, about marriage, about the responsibilities of life and the obligations of adulthood, the mother clinked the ice cubes in her glass thoughtfully and turned a clear, sober glance upon her daughter.

Singer Kristin Lems has a new 26 song double-CD called Equality Road that has some of her best vintage material including a number of songs that celebrate feminism. You can order the CD online from CD Baby for $19.95. Don't forget to also visit Kristin's website to get her live performance schedule. She is a dynamic and engaging musician.

Grace Paley, one of our finest writers, passed away last August. To celebrate her life and work, Judith Arcana has helped organize an 85th birthday party on the evening of December 11 at Broadway Books in NE Portland OR. Judith Arcana is the author of Grace Paley's Life Stories; a Literary Biography.

If you miss Grace Paley and would like to organize a birthday event for that evening in your town, please contact your local bookstore and get one going.

EMMA, a play by Howard Zinn about the renowned American anarchist Emma Goldman will be opening at the Trap Door Theater on October 18 in Chicago. For more detailed info please visit their website.

It is being directed by Kate Hendrickson, the daughter of Ayrie Moore, who belonged to the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU) and Rising Up Angry.

Melissa Silverstein takes a feminist microscope to the over glamourized world of women in Hollywood. Hollywood is so male oriented that women and their stories and expertise get shunted to the side.

Her Women in Hollywood blog will focus on what's going on for women in Hollywood - what movies are being made; what directors are getting jobs; what actors are working; and anything else that will help tip the balance.

Take a look at her Women in Hollywood blog HERE .

Susan Abod is a singer and film maker. The former lead singer of the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band is still making great music. See a video of her singing in Santa Fe. It's a knock out.

 

Susan Abod in Concert

Yes it is and the CWLU doesn't even have a MySpace page. How could it? The organization disbanded in 1977.

But that doesn't stop young people from decorating their MySpace pages with posters from the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective. The most popular ones are "Lesbian Pride", "Sisterhood is Blooming", "Lipstick and Blood" and "Abortion is a Personal Decision Not A Legal Debate".

Alison Kafer will talk about,"Queerness, Disability, and the Foundation for a Better Life" at the University of Illinois at Chicago on September 26.

Summary of the talk:

In the years since 9/11, the philanthropic organization the Foundation for a Better Life has funded a public service campaign touting "community values" and "character development," arguing that these values will result in a "better life" and future for the United States. Representations of disability and illness play a large role in this campaign, with a majority of billboards praising individuals with disabilities for having the strength of character to "overcome" their impairments. Using insights from feminist and queer theory, Alison Kafer offers a crip reading of these billboards, tracing their adherence to a neoliberal politics of sentimentality and their potential subversion by disability activists.

Adella Ladjevardi of Zohe Film Productions contacted us about a new film that will open in Chicago at the Siskel Center September 14-18.

Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman is a global conversation among women that spans 17 countries. According to the film's press kit:

Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such freedom to construct a life of their own creation. Yet old structures and realities still haunt us; many women are looking for new role models, but finding them difficult to identify for lack of precedent and because even today women so often remain the invisible, silent class...From South Africa to California, from Sweden to India, the film creates a cross-cultural story about common experiences of modern female life on issues such as love, socialization, marriage, work, childrearing, aging, violence, spirituality, death, politics.

Filmmaker Jennifer Fox has divided the film into three 2 hour episodes. She used an innovative technique she calls "passing the camera" to make the women's conversations more intimate and less artificial. I know I plan to see it. You can visit the film's amazing website at www.flyingconfessions.com.

View the trailer and some brief reviews after the jump.

Our friends over at Women and Children First Bookstore(WCF) reminded us that you can get any book in print—most often in two to five days—from womenandchildrenfirst.com. Search by title, author or ISBN by entering it in the search field near the top of the screen.Put the books you want in your shopping cart and choose whether to pick them up at the store or have them shipped.