Julie Edsforth: Ms. Foundation Donor, Seattleite

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and why you are committed to supporting women and girls?

Accumulated experiences from childhood and early adulthood came together for me at the age of 29, at the dawn of feminism’s third wave, when I co-founded Powerful Voices, a non-profit in Seattle designed to address issues of injustice at their root by supporting teenage girls in public schools and juvenile detention. I not only found a channel to direct my concern about how girls are socialized, marginalized and objectified, but I also learned that sheer determination and persistence by even a small number of people can re-shape an entire community’s response to these challenges. That’s how it was for Powerful Voices and how it can be for each of us in our own families, neighborhoods and society at large today. The door into my activism continues to be the issues and experiences of women and girls, but it opens into a room that includes the debilitating effects of racism, economic injustice and poverty and environmental destruction. Though this room (like my daughter’s clothing-strewn bedroom) can be messy and overwhelming at times, it is my personal spirit of hope and optimism that sustains me.

Why is the Ms. Foundation for Women important to you? 

I’m intrigued by the Ms. Foundation’s national focus and how it connects to what is happening in my own local community. Even as women’s issues are segregated and siloed from other issues in the progressive movement, so are the people and organizations working within the women’s movement. I like that the Ms. Foundation is a convener of groups and organizations working on similar issues across the United States. There is so much potential in the cross-fertilization of ideas and innovation. Also, I grew up seeking living examples of ways of being in the world that I wasn’t finding in my suburban, middle-class, conformist community as a teen in the late 1970s and '80s. Ms. magazine, Marlo Thomas, Gloria Steinem – they are the iconic images of feminism! The mere existence of these people and resources were a lifeline for me as I developed my own sense of agency and awareness about how to be in the world.

What do you wish for the Ms. Foundation at 40 years old? 

What’s fascinating to me is that the Ms. Foundation has spanned several waves of the feminist movement. At 40, it would be great to see the Ms. Foundation integrate those phases of its life into a coherent whole and strengthen our collective consciousness around feminism, building a narrative that is fluid and flexible and incorporates a diverse set of perspectives strong enough to break down the wall of resistance to fairness and opportunity for all.

What do you hope to see happen for women over the course of the next 40 years? 

I hope to see more of our country’s combined time and treasure going toward the women’s movement. I hope to see us finally build in constitutional protections for women. I hope to see more men embrace the label of feminist. I hope to see the societal norms shift away from tolerance of inequality to abhorrence of inequality. I hope to see a radical reduction in human suffering at the
hands of ignorance and bigotry.

Julie Edsforth lives in Seattle, Wash.

Elizabeth Brosnan: San Diego – America's Finest City?

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle. 

By Elizabeth Brosnan, executive director of Christie’s Place

During my first six months living in San Diego, I was amazed by its beauty, affluence and diversity. It truly was everything I thought America’s Finest City should be. Then I began my career in HIV and quickly learned that in the shadows of this affluence lies the truth about San Diego: a region lacking the resources to address the dire health needs of our most vulnerable residents, like Maria.

Maria had been HIV+ for more than 10 years and hadn’t been to the doctor for the last five years. Despite many health challenges, Maria is raising seven children. Maria became the guardian for four of the children when her sister’s drug addiction became likely to result in losing the children to the foster care system – a system Maria knew well. Contending with abuse since she was a child, Maria found the strength to leave the abusive father of her biological children and was struggling to support her family as a single parent. As mothers know all too well, caring for herself was last on Maria’s list of competing priorities.

But last year, life changed for Maria when a peer navigator from Christie’s Place connected with her. The peer navigator helped Maria move from isolation and into care – care that is saving her life and strengthening her family. The CHANGE for Women program provides child care while Maria attends medical appointments, food to feed her family and the support she needs to successfully manage her health. Maria recently married and is looking forward to becoming a grandmother in the future . . . a future she did not think was possible just a year ago.

Each year, Christie’s Place serves hundreds of Marias. We believe that no woman or child should live in fear. Sadly, many HIV+ women and their children are living in fear, isolation and poverty. Hope for these women and children lives at Christie’s Place – a women-led, women-focused agency that delivers coordinated and comprehensive social services to women, children and families impacted by HIV in San Diego County.

Christie’s Place is dedicated to the memory of Christie Milton-Torres a 30-year-old woman who passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1994. Christie and her mother Irene became tireless advocates with a vision to have a center where women and families could go to get support and care. April 8th will mark 17 years since Christie’s Place started as a small grassroots organization and has since grown into a full-scale social service organization serving women and families.

In 2010, San Diego County estimated that a stunning 69 percent of HIV+ women were not receiving care. These are real women, in real pain, terrified about their future and the futures of their children. Women who can’t get health insurance, women who can no longer work, women who need access to health care to continue to live, and women who need help caring for their children. Each year, while the number of women living with HIV grows, the funding doesn’t. And each year, they beg for services – beg for hope. We have to do better than this. This is not the world I want our children to inherit.

There was a time when I wondered, “How could I, and how could Christie’s Place, truly make the systems-level changes needed to address this public health crisis?” Then I had the privilege of attending the Johnson & Johnson/UCLA Healthcare Executive Program. This program, coupled with support from the Ms. Foundation for Women in the areas of policy and advocacy development over the past decade, resulted in the birth of the CHANGE for Women program – a program grounded in women’s power to ignite change.

Thanks to support from funders like AIDS United, Johnson & Johnson and MAC AIDS Fund, CHANGE for Women is now a community-wide initiative that has increased access to care. The investment in building the capacity of a small, women-led organization has been transformative on many levels. We set a goal of improving access to care by 15 percent and we are almost there! Today, 57 percent of HIV+ women in San Diego are not in care – down from 69 percent just two years ago.

On National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I think of what Christie and her mother fought for. I wonder if I am personally doing right by her legacy and if she would think we are doing enough. One of my favorite quotes from Nelson Mandela is, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” When we started CHANGE for Women, it was my hope that we could accomplish great things, even if they seemed impossible. While we are far from done, today I know that Christie would be proud of our achievements . . . achievements that once seemed impossible.

We are determined to make San Diego live up to its slogan – to make it “America’s Finest City” for women living with HIV/AIDS.

A version of this post was originally published on Elizabeth Brosnan's Huffington Post blog. Christie's Place is a Ms. Foundation for Women grantee.

Therese Hughes: The Untold Stories of Female Veterans

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle. 

By Therese Agnes Hughes

A few years ago, I started recording stories about women who cracked the military glass ceiling. The project’s focus radically changed after my first couple of interviews. I met former Department of Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs Tammy Duckworth in Washington, D.C. At the start of the interview, Assistant Secretary Duckworth let me know she had changed her mind and would not be conducting the interview. I was very disappointed and struck silent by her words. I asked her why she had had a change of heart. What she humbly shared with me was the value of the military women who are not already in the news and the importance of telling their stories, instead. She credited those women with allowing her to reach her success.

Over the past two years, I’ve networked with the women veterans that now-Congresswoman Duckworth mentioned. They are enlisted, and they are officers. They are retired, separated from service and serving on active duty. They live in our cities and communities across the nation.

They are women like Army National Guard Lt. Col. Kelly Brown, who graduated from West Point and became a pilot, serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan. While in Afghanistan, Brown was responsible for engaging Afghan citizens on the ground. In partnership with Taimoor Eshaqzai, Deputy Minister of Youth, she helped establish Afghanistan’s first National Youth Council. Brown helped make sure that girls were equitably represented on these councils. She says, “In Afghanistan, 68 percent of the population is below the age of 25 years …Girls represent 50 percent of that demographic. To say that the youth is the future of Afghanistan and that women are an important part of that future is no small statement…Working with Afghanistan’s cultural considerations [they vary somewhat between provinces], we mandated that the National Youth Council would be comprised of an equal number of boys and girls from each province.”

They are women veterans like Amelia Diaz Taylor, a medical corpsman in the Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service division, and one of a handful of Hispanic women to serve during World War II. “Two of my brothers joined the Navy. I wanted to do something for the war effort, too. We were farm workers. I am Mexican-American, and I was young. Both of my parents had to sign my enlistment papers. I was required to provide my birth certificate to a federal judge because the Navy recruiters thought I wasn’t a U.S. citizen.” Diaz-Taylor convinced the judge she was a citizen and served as a medic for the remainder of the war, in San Diego. “At this time, the Balboa Park in San Diego was set up as a MASH Unit. The boys would come home in terrible shape. Medicine was not advanced at this time. We could do little for most of them. We could only comfort them and calm their fears.”

And they are women like Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Angela Salinas, who enlisted in 1974 on a dare. “I was a woman in the Corps when the Corps was wondering what to do with women in their ranks.” Selection for the “Enlisted Commissioning Program” increased Salinas’ opportunity to grow professionally. She became the first woman assigned as a combat service support ground monitor, the first female assigned as plans and policy officer for a major combatant command, and the first woman to command the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. Today Salinas speaks to young women both in military and civilian life. She often says, “I didn’t set out to break a glass ceiling. I just worked to be the best possible Marine I could be.” Salinas is the highest-ranking Latina in our nation’s Marine Corps.

These stories represent three of the nearly 700 women veterans interviewed. They are from the three oldest military branches: Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Each veteran’s experience is unique and each female veteran’s story strengthens the opportunities for all women.

Jane Hinton: Powerful Voices: Embracing Youth Activism

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle.

“Powerful Voices has made me realize that …no matter how much women are looked down on in this society, I still matter. I still have a voice, and I do realize it is powerful,” raves Shaundriqua Webber. This 15 year old activist from Seattle participated in a program at Powerful Voices to help strong girls become strong women. Through Powerful Voices, Shaundriqua gained newfound confidence and power in her own voice. She was invited to speak out about the issue of teen prostitution to almost 200 people at the Powerful Voices’ annual Girlvolution Conference.

Almost 20 years ago, Powerful Voices’ founders came together to build an organization to address disparities faced by girls at their roots. By developing and implementing innovative, evidence-based programs that facilitate leadership skills, and foster the development of critical thinking, we have promoted the individual and collective potential of more than 5,000 adolescent girls since 1995. Through groundbreaking events like the Girlvolution Conference and publication of alternate media, Powerful Voices creates platforms for youth to voice their opinions on social justice issues that are the most relevant to them.

We focus attention on girls who face the largest disparities – girls of color, living with a low income - by meeting them in public middle schools and juvenile detention facilities.

Powerful Voices celebrates the survival skills, accomplishments and dreams of girls. Program Manager Molly Pencke notes, “It is part of my consciousness to challenge adultism (my own included).” Molly encourages people “not to devalue or tokenize youth but to listen to girls whose voices have typically been silenced and give them a platform to be heard as valuable, active, contributing members of our society.” Read more.

Powerful Voices teaches youth activists to analyze oppression and then encourages them to address inequality in their everyday lives and communities, now and as they lead us in to the future. And the program is making a real difference. As Shaundriqua says, Powerful Voices gave her “more confidence, something new that I didn't know about the world and, most importantly, a sense of belonging.”

Jane Hinton is executive director of Powerful Voices

Jane Eaton Hamilton: No Legal Impediment

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle. 

By Jane Eaton Hamilton

In June 2003, my friend Tanya and I sidled up to the counter at London Drugs, where marriage certificates were sold, and requested applications. The whole business of a drug store was going on behind us; chatter, tills, merchandise moving over beeping scanners, money changing hands. Drugs were being dispensed. But my heart was thumping hard like I was about to get caught doing something illegal.

Name of bride. Well, that one was easy, at least. My beloved, Joy, was “butchier,” so I could be, for legal purposes, whatever she wasn't.

Three years earlier, Joy and I had been denied our first marriage license – the prerequisite to becoming litigants in Canada's same-sex marriage case.

Although our case was federal (because in Canada, who can marry whom is federal jurisdiction), we had slowly wound our way toward the Supreme Court of Canada by moving up provincial channels. We had already lost at trial in the British Columbia Supreme Court, and then won upon appeal in British Columbia Appellate Court. The feds were ordered to change the law but had been given 15 months to implement the change.

Then an amazing thing happened in Ontario's lower court: The lawyers won their arm of our case, and their remedy wasn't delayed. According to the courts, Canadian gays and lesbians could wed immediately.

A federal law had been overturned. Technically, this meant that same-sex marriage was legal everywhere, which is what led us to reapply for marriage licenses in British Columbia.

I put myself down as bride. And beside me, Tanya put herself down as bride. Then we conferred a bit about how to list our lovers: Grooms? Cross that out and leave it blank? Amend it to bride? Bride One and Bride Two? We settled for making the two other women brides and handed the forms to the greasy-haired boy behind the counter.

He ran his hand through his hair. He moved his weight from one foot to another foot. His cheeks were fire red, and his neck was almost purple. His eyes sidling up from the papers to catch a glimpse of us, he said, "So, let me get this straight, you two wanna marry each other?"

“No, our partners.”

He lifted his head, as if these partners were fictions. "I'm not issuing you marriage licenses. You hafta be a man and a woman, and you're, like, not."

We explained that a federal law had just changed.

"I'm callin' somebody," he said. And then, a minute later: "Okay, so we're denyin' this. My supervisor says I, like, don't hafta."

Tanya and I turned to leave.

"Hey!" he called out.

We turned back.

"So, like, listen. If I gave you marriage licenses… Can I ask you? What would you do with them, anyhow?"

I resisted telling him the rude place I might want to stick mine if I hadn't needed it for other purposes. But what we really would have done with them is precisely what we did with the ones issued in Ontario a mere couple weeks later: We got hitched.

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of several books, most recently the short fiction book "Hunger." Her writing has appeared in the NY Times, Seventeen, Macleans, the Globe and Mail, En Route and other magazines, and she has been the recipient of many awards, including first prize in the CBC Literary Award. She writes in Vancouver, BC.

Photo credit: Luna Nordin. 

Maria Socorro Corona: Prioritizing Education

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle. 

By Maria Socorro Corona

I have five children in school. I live in a small coastal farm town called Pescadero, Calif.

Two years ago, the principal of the elementary school said, "This is the last year of the PTA; there are no more parent volunteers." Even not knowing what the PTA was, I did not want it to end, so I said I could help.

The next day, when I picked up my children, the teachers smiled. "We hear you are the new president of the PTA." That's where the story begins: I asked what PTA means.

About 85 percent of the students are Hispanic and now, for the first time in a long time, the PTA president was also Hispanic. I felt the trust and faith the community had in me. My dream was to get all of the parents involved.

It has not been easy. I am balancing my family with my waitressing job and studying for my own GED. But it is important to me because my parents were never involved. In our immigrant culture, we focus so much on work that we don’t always pay enough attention to our kids and their education. We feel we are doing the right thing.

I needed to be different. My counselor, Julie, told me one day that I was the only one who could change the culture and make education more important.

The donation part of the PTA work is easy. Everyone, Hispanic and white, happily gives. But at the events, it is always the same small group of people attending, with half of the food leftover. It makes me sad. Is it even worth it? The only reward is the children's smiles when they go on field trips or get scholarships.

But I can see a change already. This year, our leaders of the PTA are all Hispanic women. I hope this will help other parents say, “I can do it too.”

Joanna Cruz: Witness to Hunger

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle.

By Joanna Cruz

I am a mother. I am a worker. I am a witness. And I am on food stamps.

Too often, people think that individuals on public assistance programs are lazy; I would like for them to spend one day in my shoes to change that perception.

I work 35 hours a week cooking food for other people, while struggling to feed my own family. I work the night shift so I am there to care for my children during the day – meaning that in addition to being hungry, I am tired all the time. Despite being physically tired, I became more exhausted of being ignored. I joined a program called Witnesses to Hunger in order to have a voice.

With my voice, I share that, even while working, I still qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. I receive less than $6 per person per day. What other people might spend on their morning coffee at Starbucks I budget to feed my child for an entire day and often I go without eating to make sure my children are fed. Even with the food stamps, I struggle to make the money last for the entire month. I try to buy my children healthy food, but fruits and vegetables are expensive and hard to find in my community. Where they are available, at some stands, they do not accept food stamps.

While I work hard in hopes of surviving without food stamps or other public assistance, I raise my voice so others know the importance of SNAP. I am a Witness to Hunger because I have lived hunger and want to make sure my children do not have the same struggles. For that to happen, we need strong nutrition programs to ensure our children have a strong future.