Ah, the Kentucky Derby: that one time of year when the rest of the country sees that we are not just the toothless poor. We are the gaudy rich, as well.
The L.A. Times reports that the Kentucky Derby is the only annual sporting event that is watched by more women than men.
Rosie Napravnik becomes the first female jockey to win the Kentucky Oaks.
Hosting a Derby party? Try my recipe for mint juleps, made with 100% sexual harassment–free bourbon!
My belated, brief recap of the Unite Against the War on Women rally, 4/28/12:
Congressman John “Awesome” Yarmuth spoke around 2:30 pm. He was, of course, awesome.
We estimate that there were approximately 300 people present for the Congressman’s address. The crowd size fluctuated after Yarmuth spoke, averaging between 100–150 people in size. Really, it was a great turnout, especially on a day with so many competing events.
The Unite Women Kentucky rally organizers pose with Congressman John Yarmuth.
Amy Shoemaker, Democratic candidate for the KY State Senate, got to speak after all! She, and every single one of the speakers and bands that performed that day contributed something different yet equally amazing to the rally. The progressive organizations that tabled the event made it easy for attendees to get informed and connect with other pro-women people. In times like these, events like this remind us that we’re not alone, we’re not crazy, and we’re not going anywhere.
There will be more pictures and video to follow.
As for Unite Women Kentucky, this rally was only the beginning of our efforts to fight for women’s rights in Kentucky and in all 50 states. Email unitewomenkentucky@gmail.com to join the fight.
HERLINKS
We’re waging war against the War on Women 4/28/12.
We need YOU to donate your money and your time. The Unite Against the War on Women rally is less than a week away, and we’re still $1,400 away from reaching our fundraising goal of $2,000. This covers the basic, non-negotiable expenses of staging a rally: fencing, porta-potties, promotional materials, etc. Donate here.
“This event can’t happen without money,” said organizer Eryn Heakin.
The event also can’t happen without people like you. Volunteers are needed to help with the final organizing push this week, and of course to work the rally. Email unitewomenkentucky@gmail.c
Why should you donate your precious time and money? Because Congressman John Yarmuth, that’s why.
Second, women’s health is under attack.
Third, “I would love to show Mitch McConnell that there is a War on Women,” said state leader Leslie Neidig.
Wouldn’t you? Get involved today!
Mark your calendars for the “Unite Against the War on Women” rally to protest the current nationwide onslaught of anti-woman legislation.
We’ll assemble on Saturday, April 28th from 2:00–6:00 p.m. at the Fresh Start Growers Supply in Louisville, KY. Go to the Facebook event page right this second for directions, lots of additional info, and to RSVP for the rally.
Please donate to the cause. Staging a protest of this import requires serious dough, so give whatever you can and urge your family, friends, and co-workers to do the same. I’ll be posting more ways to help organize as I become more involved myself.
Speakers include Congressman John “Awesome” Yarmuth, Dr. Catherine Fosl (Director of the Anne Braden Institute), Amy Shoemaker (state senate candidate), and Derek Morgan of the ACLU. Doesn’t get much better than that, folks.
Don’t live in Kentucky? Don’t worry! “Unite Against the War on Women” rallies are being planned all over the country. Go to Unite Women dot org to find a rally in your neck of the woods.
There will also be a rally in Lexington on 4/28. Unlike the Louisville rally, the Lexington rally is not affiliated with Unite Women (apparently the original group split into two for whatever reason), but who cares? We’re all working for the same amazing cause!
One feminist tests the empowering possibilities of burlesque
KP is a 24-year-old graduate student. In her debut post for HerLinked, KP explains why it was feminism that led her both to join and quit a Kentucky burlesque troupe.
Let me start by saying, I am a feminist. This is a label I am proud of, a label that represents equality and justice not only for women, but also for all human beings. Being a feminist, to me, means recognizing the intersectionality of oppression. You cannot combat gender inequality without also combating inequalities based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, etc. Feminism is about empowering the masses; it’s about empowering yourself. This was how I approached burlesque dancing.
My reasons for wanting to be a burlesque dancer were complex. I have always had a problem with society’s “Madonna / whore” complex. That is, forcing women to either be pure, virginal goodness or dirty, sexual evil. I wanted to use burlesque dancing as a rejection of this oppressive concept.
Although I have always been a political activist and pushed the boundaries idealistically and academically, I have been accused of being a “goody two shoes” when it comes to sexuality. Let me explain: it is not in my personality to sleep with many men. I have sex only within the bounds of a serious relationship. However, I’ve always been bothered by the fact that my “low number” leads people to believe I’m prudish or didn’t like sex. The other reaction I get from people is, “Good for you for not whoring around.”
To me, while there are a variety of intentions behind these responses, both are problematic. Why is it that in order to be a sexually liberated woman I have to sleep with many men? And why is it that, in some people’s eyes, sleeping with a very small amount of people somehow makes me better than women who sleep with many people? Both of these judgments are two dimensional and limiting.
When I met the women in the troupe..they told me it was absolutely about empowerment, about feeling great about your body and about owning your sexuality. And for a hot minute, that’s what it was about…
I decided to do burlesque because I wanted to throw up the middle finger to this whole line of thought. I wanted to be empowered, to own my sexuality, to prove that you can be a sexually empowered woman without sleeping with lots of men. I also wanted to prove that I don’t gather my worth from the idea that I’ve slept with fewer people than most. I wanted to reject Madonna / whore and I wanted to have fun doing it. Burlesque seemed the perfect venue for this. And when I met the women in the troupe, they confirmed all of my feelings. They told me it was absolutely about empowerment, about feeling great about your body and about owning your sexuality. And for a hot minute, that’s what it was about…
The deeper I got into burlesque the more I realized that it wasn’t quite as idealistic as I’d hoped. Continue reading
Continuing our ongoing coverage of the labor movement, here’s something interesting for your Saturday morning:
A majority of Lexington city sanitation workers have petitioned the local government for recognition as a union.
On Wednesday, petition cards authorizing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to represent city sanitation workers were submitted to the city’s chief administrative officer, Richard Moloney. The authorization cards were signed by more than 60 percent of the city’s approximately 190 sanitation workers.
The workers submitted their petitions on the 44th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was in Memphis that day in April to stand with sanitation workers who were on strike and seeking to form a union to better their working conditions and pay.
Gotta love when history and social justice merge so serendipitously.
If you need an abortion in Kentucky, you have two choices: the EMW Women’s Surgical Center in either Louisville or Lexington. And, between now and April 1, you have no choice as to whether you’ll encounter these cursewords:
A group of “40 Days for Life” campaigners at approximately 5:30 p.m. on March 9, 2012. They stand slightly to the left of the entrance to the EMW Clinic, chanting the Hail Mary. We assume they’ve held at least a few people back to keep praying the gay away. Wouldn’t want to leave that unattended.
They’re with the “40 Days for Life” campaign, which is a “focused pro-life effort that consists of 40 days of prayer and fasting” during the Lenten season. The woman at the EMW Clinic’s front desk said that they always have pro-life protesters during the day, but for the 40 Days campaign they’re sticking around all day and night, preying on praying for clinic visitors. They also keep count of the number of women that enter the building on their Twitter page.
“It’s their right to protest,” she shrugged.
That is absolutely true. But it is also true that, if you do have an appointment at the EMW, there are escorts available to help you make that journey (unfortunately the front entrance where the protesters stand is the only way in).
Please consider supporting the EMW Clinic by donating to the National Abortion Federation or any other pro-choice organization by becoming an escort yourself. You are never alone in the fight to exercise your reproductive rights, no matter what others would have you think.
NARAL’s report card for Kentucky (Spoiler: we get an “F.”)
National Network of Abortion Funds — Kentucky
Every Saturday Morning blog
Crowd for author Kristen Simmons at Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, KY
Louisville’s favorite local bookstore Carmichael’s was downright stuffy tonight, packed as it was with women and men of all ages.
They gathered for a Q&A and reading by former Louisvillian and current Floridian novelist Kristen Simmons.
Simmons’ debut novel, “Article 5,” is, according to Carmichael’s,
a dystopian teen thriller. Set in a future America where the Bill of Rights has been revoked and replaced with the Moral Statutes, it is the story of 17-year-old Ember Miller and her free-spirit mother. When her mother is arrested for being morally suspect, Ember is sent to a repressive reform school. What follows is a tale about standing up for what you believe in and for what’s right — even if there are horrific consequences. Fans of The Hunger Games will love this exciting new novel, the first in a planned trilogy.
Ember and her mother live in Louisville but are torn from their home in Chapter 1. Simmons said that she and her husband used to live very close to Carmichael’s (on Frankfort Avenue), and that, like the main characters in “Article 5,” she thinks often of the place she once called home.
“Even though we’ve moved out of this place, we think about it a lot, and we reference it all the time,” Simmons said of her and her husband Jason.
After a Q&A with the audience, Simmons read the arrest scene from Chapter 1, in which Ember’s mother is arrested for retroactively violating Article 5 of the Moral Statutes, which states that “Children are considered valid citizens only when conceived by a married man and wife.”
A few of the other Articles include, “Article 1 — The United States embraces the Church of America as her official religion. Article 2 — Literature and other media considered immoral are hereby banned and shall not be owned, bought, sold, or traded in any capacity,” and, my personal favorite, “Article 4 – Traditional male and female roles shall be observed.”
You see where Simmons is going with this. It is the Romney, Gingrich, Santorum vision of American. It’s the American forewarned in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in “The Hunger Games,” and by today’s online feminist community. But our brave, rebellious heroine Ember isn’t going down without a fight.
Kristen Simmons signing her debut novel “Article 5″ at Carmichael’s in Louisville, KY.
Simmons spoke openly about how hard she herself had to fight to get published. She wrote for seven years before catching a break, and in that time accrued over 200 rejection letters. Simmons views this period as preparation for the time in which the “stars aligned” for her.
Simmons said, “It was the right time. It was the right manuscript,” referring to “Article 5.”
What did Simmons do to support herself during these seven years of writing and rejection? She worked as a mental health therapist (a few of her former co-workers were in the audience tonight). Mental health issues are explored in “Article 5,” as the main characters attempt to deal with the various crises they must face.
The second installment in the trilogy is set to come out next January, and the third and final installment the January after that. Buy “Article 5” at your local bookstore or online.
Don’t go looking for it at Carmichael’s tonight, though. They’re happily sold out.
In my inaugural post, I thought I’d highlight a recent bit of news about a Louisville woman who was terminated from her job at Our Lady of Peace hospital last year for trying to organize a union. Joe Sonka at Leo Weekly first covered the story last year:
Amy Doyle had worked at Our Lady of Peace psychiatric hospital for nearly nine years, most recently as a mental health associate working with mentally retarded teenagers at a group home where she helped them with school and activities of daily living.
But in late September, Our Lady of Peace management suddenly suspended Doyle.
“They suspended me for ‘distribution of non-work materials and discussion of non-work related topics, to the level of harassment,’” Doyle says. “That was their actual wording. But they never told me what I was distributing. They never told me who I was harassing.”
The whole article is worth a read, as is the followup, here. News just came down this week that the NLRB, who heard testimony in Amy’s case in January of this year, has issued a ruling. The hospital has been ordered to put Amy back to work within fourteen days, give her all of her back wages, and post a notice at all of their facilities announcing that they have violated federal labor law and that their employees have a legal right to form a union.
This used to be a barn.
This used to be a trailer.
These are scenes from the aftermath of the storms that ravaged the Southeast and Midwest on Friday. They are specifically of a stretch of West Highway 1376 in East Bernstadt, a small town in Laurel County, Kentucky. Kayla Vanover of Pikeville, KY drove to East Bernstadt on Saturday to document the damage done to her family’s home.
While there were no fatalities on West Highway, a street called Little Arthur Ridge was not so lucky. There were five fatalities in Laurel County, all occurring in East Bernstadt. The state total stands at 21. The Laurel County Judge-Executive estimates that 100 homes were destroyed, many of those being mobile homes, and 100 seriously damaged, in a town of approximately 800 people.
Many in this community and others like it do not have the financial resources, much less home insurance, necessary to recover quickly or completely from damage like this. They must rely on their community, on the tree removal company that came out to clear debris for free and on neighbors who went from house to house, not asking but simply pitching in, tarping windows, removing debris, and so on.
The tornadoes may be gone, but for survivors the storm has just begun. Please pitch in by donating to a disaster relief organization like the American Red Cross. Urge friends, family and co-workers to do the same.
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