All Sorts of Follow-Up Resources!

We know watching a movie like Iron Jawed Angels left many of us inspired to be part of making change. So, we wanted to offer you a "starter" reading list as well as some suggestions for action steps. Enjoy! And feel free to comment with your own ideas.



Reading Suggestions for the Journey:

For Young Girls:

• Elizabeth Leads the Way by Tanya Lee Stone
  
• The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
• also check out The Syracuse Cultural Workers for more resources for raising girls and boys in thoughtful ways

Reading Specific to Women’s History:

• The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner (a classic; challenging but worth it)
• No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle B. Freedman (newer, hip, readable and important)
  
• Century of Struggle by Eleanor Flexner (oldie but goodie if you’re wanting the classic tale of the suffragists)
  
• The Creation of Feminist Consciousness by Gerda Lerner
  
• You Have Stept Out of Your Place: A History of Women and Religion in America by Susan Hill Lindley
  
• Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts by Anne Llewellyn Barstow
  
• The Grounding of Modern Feminism by Nancy Cott
  

Other Titles for Women:

• Grassroots: A Field Guide For Feminist Activism by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (has TONS of ideas for “what you can do now”)
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Ms. Magazine
• The Good Body (audiotapes) by Eve Ensler
• The Maternal is Political by Shari MacDonald Strong
• Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens
• African American Women In the Struggle for the Vote, 1850 – 1920 by Rosalyn Terbog-Penn
• The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images by Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terbog-Penn

**Readers are welcome to contact Dr. Susan Hall directly if they want titles regarding women in religion, women and psychotherapy, feminist ethics or biographies of women. Her "spam proof" email is: susan at susan hall dot com. (Just make sure and translate that into its proper email address form!)

You asked, “What can I do?” Here are some ideas. Challenge yourself to do at least one this month:

1. Speak up! Simply use your voice to express your opinion…it’s more radical an act than you might guess.
2. Believe in women’s power to change the world.
3. This Christmas/Hanukkah, buy family members girl-friendly books and items that challenge traditional gender assumptions.
4. Read Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards…and do just one of the ideas suggested in it.
5. Support women-owned businesses, both retail and services (attorney, accountant, insurance agents, doctors, therapists, handy-women, etc.).
6. If you know a woman who undercharges for her services, tell her so and urge her to respect herself financially.
7. If you own your own business, provide pro bono services for a woman in need.
8. Insist in the equal representation of women on whatever boards or committees on which you serve.
9. Change the topic of conversation…from dieting and self-annihilation to the belief and empowerment of women everywhere.
10. Support women verbally. Tell them you believe in them and support their dreams…help them take themselves seriously.

Most of these ideas won’t take much time…just courage. We know that “Courage is often mistaken for insanity among women,” (as the psychiatrist said in Iron Jawed Angels) so when your courage wanes, remember the women in the movie, our foremothers: Alice Paul, Inez Milholland Boissevain, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Carrie Chapman Catt, Doris Stevens, and Lucy Burns. We're pretty sure they'll show you the way. Remember behind every brilliant women, there is another brilliant women—you are not alone. Learn about your legacy as you move forward to change the world!

Casting a Ballot and New Consciousness

I stood there in my polling booth with my simple Bic pen, filling in and filling in that precious circle to make my choice for President nice and dark to make sure my vote was correctly counted. The moment felt entirely ordinary. Exquisitely surreal. Ironically antiquated (paper and ink?). And somehow the substance of the future. All at the same time.

While filling out my ballot, my mind's eye kept re-visiting scenes from Iron Jawed Angels, mainly the ones of Alice Paul in prison and being force-fed. Women were imprisoned and went on hunger strikes so that I can hold this ballot. Women gave the work of their lives so that I can take part in my democracy.

Walking back from the polling booth, kicking fall leaves under my feet, I felt my stomach flopping—Election Day nerves—and the tears start to come. That room had been so ordinary; the paper ballot too simple for all we were participating in. I had been more awake this time than four years ago, and my soul wanted fireworks. And alas, I had only a Bic pen and tiny circles to express that which surged in me.

I was realizing that something deep had changed in me from the last time I had cast a ballot. I had stopped giving in to cynicism, and I was finding this new sense of hope disorienting.

My dear friend Dr. Susan Hall (one of the co-organizers for the Seattle Iron Jawed Angels event) expressed my feelings well when she wrote to me this week: "I heard an African-American man talking on NPR this past week about the election's meaning for Black people, and he said something to the effect of: we have had a lack of audacity of imagination. I think that very phrase would fit women (of all skin colors)…we've settled for less than the full emancipation for which our foremothers fought and dreamed. When women take steps forward for themselves and for other women, they are living toward the imagination of a better society, a better world."

For me, voting last Tuesday felt like taking bounding steps forward—and not just because I voted for a history-making candidate—but also because I cast my vote in the awareness of the legacy of my foremothers. I was conscious of the cost of my vote. And I was ready to risk believing again that groups of women and men—committed to imagination and hope and justice—can change the world.

So that was my experience voting after watching Iron Jawed Angels. What was yours??? We would love to know. Please feel free to leave a comment and let us know how you experienced Election Day after watching such a compelling story of women's suffrage.

Update on the Event

Thank you so much for your interest in the event! As of today, we are at capacity!

21st Century Suffragists

SAVE THE DATE!

In the early 1900's a group of courageous, risky, amazing women dared to push the boundaries of political protest, convention, and even their own personal health and safety to secure women's voting rights. Now, fewer than 100 years later, we celebrate their arduous journey as well as their stellar achievements by gathering to view Iron Jawed Angels, an HBO film that recounts the struggle of suffragists who fought for the passage of the 19th Amendment. Starring Hilary Swank and Frances O'Connor, Iron Jawed Angels invites women to a poignant and informative look at our own history and compels us into a future that we are yet to write and influence.

After first discovering this film, a small group of independent, bi-partisan, and passionate women in Seattle decided to invest their own money, rent a fabulous venue, and invite other women to join them. They sought to celebrate and learn, to invite conversation and solidarity, and to remember those who have pioneered our rights. This event is the first initiative into that desire. And you are invited!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

1:00-4:30 pm

IRON JAWED ANGELS

an HBO film

The Big Picture

2505 First Avenue, Seattle

Suggested Cash Donation: $15-$20/person

This event is free and open to the public. Your donation will help recoup personal, financed costs of the individual women who organized this event. Additional cash donations will be accepted as well.

Limited to the first 100 women who register, this event is one you don't want to miss. Bring your girlfriends, your daughters (over 21 only), your sisters, your mothers. A great film. No-host cocktails. Light food. Incredible women. And all just days before our own presidential election. What could be better?!?

CLICK HERE

to send an email and reserve your spot!

Be one of the 100 women who will participate in this fabulous afternoon.

Remember. Reflect. Respond.

Join the Movement.

(Sorry, no one under 21 permitted, including infants and children.)