The Kingston Branch of the American Association of University Women is sponsoring a "Meet the Candidates Night" featuring candidates from Green, Ulster, and Dutchess counties who are running for the New York State Legislature. The meeting is being held as a public service to permit candidates to state their positions on campaign finance reform, pay equity and comparable worth, health care, and other state issues, which will be followed by interaction with voters from each of the counties.
Join us at the Saugerties Senior Center, Friday, October 24, at 7 pm.
Image via WikipediaThe Kingston Branch of AAUW invites everyone to join us Tuesday, September 30th, to watch and discuss Hacking Democracy.
HBO: Hacking Democracy - Synopsis: "Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America's democracy. The timely, cautionary documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system."
This year we will spend part of every Public Policy committee educating ourselves about important public issues.
How exciting! AAUW Fellow Jane Chen's company, EmbraceGlobal, has a chance at a $1.5M donation from American Express to make the $25 incubators they've designed available throughout the world. All they need is for all of us to vote for them before September 29th! Here's the link: Just visit the Embrace website at http://www.embraceglobal.org/amexchallenge.html to cast your vote.
Want to read our original post about this AAUW fellow and her company? Read it here.
On Friday, October 3, the Poughkeepsie Branch will host the AAUW-NYS District 4 Fall Conference: Beyond the Rhetoric: Understanding how multiculturalism can help your personal, professional, & organizational growth — a day of panels, roundtables, and community discussions about ethnic and racial diversity.
David Tulin, our keynote speaker, is outstanding in his field of diversity training. Galen Kirkland, our luncheon speaker, is the Commissioner of Human Rights for New York State.
Please join us! First: let Geeta Desai (845-297-7589) know ASAP which roundtable (Business Development, Cultural Competency, Education, Health & Human Services, or Media) you want to attend (your 1st & 2nd choices), then send your check and registration form to Cathleen Kinn. The fee for AAUW members is $30, which includes breakfast, lunch, & afternoon dessert.
Here's a reminder about AAUW's book club. We'll meet at 1 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 16, upstairs in the Kingston Library.
We'll be discussing the book The Reluctant Fundamentalist, after a presentation on the author, Mohsin Hamid, by Rokki Carr. The main character, Changez, is a Princeton-educated Pakistani. He has a wonderful job in NYC until 9/11 changes everything.
We'll also talk about many aspects of the current situation in the Middle East. I recently saw the movie Not Without My Daughter. It's about a woman married to an Irani trapped in Iran and trying to leave with her daughter. And remember the book we read by Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Last night, I saw the movie Flight 93, made to remember the aircraft that crashed in Pennslyvania on 9-11-01.
Here's a quotation from a lecture given at Hillsdale College by Mark Steyn, an author and columnist. A complaint has been filed against him in Canada by the Canadian Islamic Congress bacause of a book review he wrote. The group accused him of being a "flagrant Islamophobic". In his lecture, he paraphrased Sir Edward Grey, who said, on August 3, 1914, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." (Remember reading Barabra Tuchman's Guns in August?) Steyn said, "Today the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way."
All of these things can be fodder for our discussion. Should be interesting.
Image via WikipediaHelp! Please help! President Bush and HHS continue to chip away at patient rights to information and treatment choice. For years, health care workers have been excused from participating in procedures they oppose on religious grounds. But these proposed regulations go far beyond that.
Make your opinion known. Right now. Today. This is the 30 day comment period on these proposed regulations.
American Association of University Women - Two Minute Activist: "The new regulations, proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, would allow health care employees to refuse to provide any health care service that is in any way contrary to their personal beliefs without any consideration for patients' guaranteed access to care and full information. Building upon three existing refusal clauses, the new regulation would allow individuals to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients to other locations where such services could be obtained. It would also grant refusal rights to any members of a health care facility's paid and voluntary staff, from appointment schedulers to janitorial staff. Further, the proposed regulations may undermine state laws protecting women's access to reproductive health care, including those requiring health insurance plans that provide drug benefits to cover contraceptives; laws that require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape survivors; and laws that require pharmacies to fill patients' valid medical prescriptions.
There is an extensive body of laws, regulations and court precedent that currently balance the religious rights of workers with the practical needs of employers - health services providers included - all while ensuring a patient's access to reproductive health care. This balance is vital to providing critical health services ..."
Use the link to AAUW's two minute activist to make HHS aware of your concerns.
"So, refresh your memory. Some women won't vote this year because . . . why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?"
The quote above comes from an email I received in celebration of the anniversary last week of women's right to vote. I've reproduced the email below. It tells the story of those women who fought long and hard and paid very high prices for that right. It sets the stage for our TV show which premiere's on Wednesday evening. It is a story we shouldn't forget.
But first, let me tell you about our premiere.
WHY VOTE? See your AAUW colleagues, Doris Goldberg, Ruth Wahtera, Kathy Pauker, Irvin Rosenthal, Bette Nitze, Louise Flood, and surprise guests discuss the voting issues. Co-hosts and producers Garnette Arledge, President of Kingston AAUW, and Janine Mower, Chairperson for Voter Education have been working all summer to address these questions. The result: an eleven-part public access tv show, (Woodstock Channel 23, or www.woodstocktv.org or ustream.com) from 8:30-9 pm, from Wednesday, Sept. 3 through Nov. 11.
We looked at all reasonable and true excuses, still excuses however. So we suggest watch our show tomorrow night, or anytime on the web then pre-plan your carpooling dates, take the children with you to the polls to model the voting privilege, remember polls are open before and after work. The one reason given above that cannot remain standing, the Power of One Vote, national AAUW's campaign. Each vote, even for states where the media calls it red or blue, or belonging to the other candidate, even then if the majority voters, that's women, would vote, we could have AAUW women in political office, we could have a government we choose taking our rightful response-ability seriously. Why Vote: because we can!
The email:
This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. (photo: Lucy Burns)
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic. They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
(photo Dora Lewis) They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging,beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf)
So, refresh your memory. Some women won't vote this year because . . . why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work?Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
All reasonable and true excuses, still excuses however. So pre-plan your carpooling dates, take the children with you to model the voting privilege, polls are open before and after work. The one reason given above that cannot be remain standing, the Power of One Vote. Each vote, even for states where the media calls it red or blue, or belonging to the other candidate, even then if the majority voters, that's women would vote, we could have AAUW women in political office, we could have a government we choose taking our rightful response-ability seriously.
Why Vote: because we can!
A recent HBO movie 'Iron Jawed Angels' is a graphic depiction of the battle these women mentioned above waged so that each 'I' could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have her say. Frankly as a 'former' dis-enheartened voter, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history and social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch the politicians try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'
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