CWLU Herstory Blog

Feministing.com is a bold brash feminist blog site where many women and some men start their day by reading the articles and opinion pieces and then posting their comments.

The youngish organizers of Feministing represent a generation of women who are fighting the complex 21st century battle for gender equality. They are web-savvy, very smart and refreshingly outspoken.

Now they are trying to create network of likeminded groups through an online initiative called the Feministing Alliance.

According to Feministing.com:

Feministing has partnered with Meetup to form a Meetup Alliance - a tool that will help feminists all over the country meet and organize in person. Here's the cool part: it's all up to you, dear readers, to get this shit moving!

If you want to start up a feminist group in your area, or if you want to promote your existing local feminist group, this is your chance! Our new Feministing Meetup Alliance will act as a kind of umbrella for organizers of local feminist Meetups - connecting feminists who want to meet, talk and even organize.

Join author Paula Giddings for a reading and discussion of her new book Ida: A Sword Among Lions on March 10 at 6 pm at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum.

Ida B. Wells was one of the most fearless crusaders for civil rights and women's rights in United States history. She was a newspaper editor and publisher, investigative journalist, co-founder of the NAACP, political candidate, mother, wife, and the single most powerful leader in the anti-lynching campaign in America.

We received this essay on the 2008 election from Aurora Levins Morales. Aurora is a Latina-Jewish poet, scholar and activist. Aurora and her mom Rosario were both members of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union. In it Aurora discusses the sexism and racism that have characterized this election season.

Over the last few weeks, and increasingly the last few days I've been getting emails from every direction, (particularly the progressive friend who have my address,) telling me why we should all get behind either Clinton or Obama. Since I'm not a registered Democrat, I won't be voting in this primary, but I've been thinking about it a lot.

 

Faculty from nine universities and colleges will hold the largest ever conference on black and Latina/o sexuality on April 11-12 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Race, Sex, Power: New Movements in Black and Latina/o Sexualities," the culmination of more than two years of planning, will bring together academics, activists, and artists to address topics ranging from intimacy and desire to HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancy to humor and Hip Hop.

Organizer Cathy Cohen, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, calls the conference "a bold effort to rethink what sexuality means for the two largest racial minorities in the US." Dr. Jocelyn Elders, the former United States Surgeon General appointed by President Clinton, will open the conference on Friday morning, April 11.

One of the hallmarks of this conference, Cohen stresses, is its emphasis on collaboration and inclusiveness. The complex coordination of nine institutions permitted organizers to draw on a pool of expertise that no one college or university could hope to contain. The unusual blend of research, activism, and art encourages all participants to think outside their personal assumptions and the conventions of their fields.

Finally, the organizers hope to draw an audience of specialists and non-specialists alike. Asencio reminds us that knowledge about sexuality is hardly confined to those who make a profession of its study. Everyone, Asencio argues, is engaged in a critique of current sexual conventions. The conference is simply the space where such knowledge can be shared, rethought, and transformed.

LOCATION: UIC FORUM, 725 W. Roosevelt Rd., Chicago, IL



SPONSORING UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES:

Chicago State University
Columbia College Chicago
DePaul University

The Graduate Center, CUNY
Northwestern University
Roosevelt University
University of Chicago
University of Connecticut at Storrs
University of Illinois, Chicago



Conference Website

 

In an effort to remake Chicago into a "global city" – one attractive to businesses and tourists worldwide – Chicago's educational, environmental, employment and housing policies have been rewritten over the last two decades. These changes in policy and funding priorities have effected Chicago residents differently by class, race and, as we focus on here, by gender.

 

Beyondmedia Education is embroiled in a censorship battle with Chicago Public Television station WTTW over their refusal to air the documentary Turning a Corner. This video recently won the Chicago Reporter’s John A. McDermott Documentary (short) Film Competition. As part of the award, Turning a Corner was to be screened on WTTW’s Image Union program. The station is refusing to air the video, citing its sensitive subject matter.

Turning a Corner tells the personal stories of women formerly involved in the sex trade in Chicago – through their own voices – and follows their efforts to raise public awareness and promote legislative reforms.

 

Come to Women and Children First Bookstore on Thursday, November 8 to hear Paula Kamen talk about new book, Finding Iris Chang

2007 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of Iris Chang’s landmark book, The Rape of Nanking, which chronicles the Nanking massacre -- the torture and murder of Chinese citizens at the hands of the Japanese. The book brought Chang worldwide fame as a human rights pioneer, yet Chang herself was a mystery.

 

If you are working in the fields of human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and water sustainablity, PulseWire welcomes you to their founding online community.

Here, any woman with access to a basic computer, and eventually a cell phone, can speak her truth, ask for what she needs and share her solutions through pictures, audio, video and the written word.

Please visit Pulsewire to learn more.

 

Three hundred people crowded in Reza's restuarant on the Northside to bid farewell to Mardge Cohen and Gordy Schiff, two of Chicago's finest physicians. Gordy has accepted a teaching position at Harvard, meaning that he and Mardge will be moving to Boston.

Mardge and Gordy have been battling for quality healthcare at Chicago's Cook County Hospital since the the 1970's. Gordy is known in the world of medicine for his research in patient safety. Mardge became one of Chicago's leading experts on HIV/AIDS and has worked extensively in Rwanda with HIV/AIDS patients there. Mardge is a former member of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Herstory Project.

Paula Kamen's bio of writer Iris Chang is due in the bookstores on October 22. Iris Chang committed suicide in November 2004 after a long battle with depression.

Iris Chang's best known book was The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. The book tells the story of the infamous 1937-1938 Nanking massacre which took place during the Sino-Japanese War.