NOW NEWS
Sexual Harassment Rears its Ugly Head – Again
Your Vote Counts – in more ways than you think
Letter from SLO NOW to National NOW Board
November 15, 2011 NOW Celebrates Women's Equality Day August 26 is celebrated as the anniversary date of the passage in 1920 of the 19th amendment to the US constitution, giving women the right to vote in federal elections. As we all know, California gave women suffrage in 1911, as a number of western states had already done, but it took another 9 years for the rest of the nation to follow suit. Immediately after passage, women registered and voted in large numbers, ran for and were elected to office, and were instrumental in passage of a number of laws to improve the lot of women workers, children, and society in general. By the 1970’s, there was talk of parity in Congress, a woman president, although that groundswell of enthusiasm has ebbed now and that dream has receded. If we can just keep the gains we made. What are those gains? The San Luis Obispo chapter of the National Organization for Women asked the “woman on the street” these questions in honor of Women’s Equality Day: How would your life be different if you had been born the opposite sex? How has the Women’s Rights movement affected your own life? What impact has the Women’s Rights movement had on American society? Here’s a sampling of their answers: How would your life be different? How has the Women’s Rights movement affected your own life? What impact has the Women’s Rights movement had on American society? What do you think? NOW Celebrates Love Your Body Day Part of the message of women’s equality is that we do not have to conform to a beauty standard set by men for their viewing pleasure. We are always being told we are too fat, that our noses and breasts need “work,” sold wrinkle cream to look younger, etc etc. Girls absorb this message early in their lives; over half of 4th grade girls have been or are on a diet. Not only are these messages wrong and damaging to women’s self-esteem, they are also a way for the cosmetic industry to make money. Here are some comparative costs: For the price of breast implant surgery, you could pay for a year of college tuition. A set of salon hair highlights would pay for two weeks’ groceries. The cost of a pair of designer jeans could instead pay for a lifetime ski lift ticket; acrylic nails would pay for a day at an amusement park; a tube of lipstick could pay for a long distance phone call to an old friend. October 19 is Love Your Body Day. For more than a decade, NOW Foundation's Love Your Body Campaign has been calling out the fashion, cosmetics and advertising industries for promoting unrealistic images of women. The campaign encourages women and girls to celebrate their bodies and reject the narrow beauty ideals endorsed in the media. Check out the website, Let's Talk, for stories by real women about their real struggles with body image and their ultimate successes. NOW encourages all viewers to make their own videos and post to the website. Your voice might be the one that reaches a girl or woman who is struggling with her self-image. And together, the more videos we create, the more we become part of the solution. Also check the poster created for this year’s celebration and much more information at Now Foundation Love Your Body 2011 poster. Coordinator’s Corner by Angie King If you are reading this on our web page, hooray!! That means people are visiting our newly updated website. Thank you. Please send us your feedback. There have been a lot of changes in NOW, some good, and some not so good. About a year ago, the local chapter stopped having regular monthly meetings, because no one was coming to them. In fact, the membership rolls had been dropping steadily for about a year before that! The officers figured that meant there wasn’t a lot of interest in the current issues in our community (like the Title IX violations at Cuesta College) or the country as a whole (like you name it – violence against women, wage disparity, health care access), and there certainly wasn’t a lot of interest in planning any actions. As you know, NOW is an action oriented organization, meaning not only do we take a position on issues affecting the rights of women, but we take action to bring about the changes we seek. Since we weren’t holding any actions, we also weren’t getting any donations and our treasury wouldn’t sustain the activities we had been undertaking – like tabling at Farmer’s Market, paying for space in the Women’s Press newsletter, publishing informational ads in the local media, etc. Of course, the internal problems at the national level of NOW, and the effect that had on state and local chapters wasn’t helping. As an example, at the previous national NOW election conference in Indiana, a “slate” of officers was introduced at the last minute, and voted in by 9 votes – with some alleging the last-minute recruiting of new members for the sole purpose of voting in that slate of officers. That slate has taken some actions which the grass roots membership does not approve, for instance, supporting presidential candidates in the 2008 election whose positions were (publicly at least) contrary to the mission of NOW. More importantly however were the actions taken against the state and local chapters who disagreed with the national positions. The situation with LA NOW is among the most egregious (see below). They changed the by-laws so that the dues paid by individuals and collected by a local chapter sent in by local chapters for its members no longer had to be rebated in part back to the chapter, so the chapters could support that membership. Many state chapters were forced to close their doors altogether. CA NOW was fortunate to be able to negotiate with its landlord, and some of its suppliers, to forego accounts payable, while we struggled to collect our dues. There were 2 on-line meetings of the national board, which any NOW member could sign on to, to discuss the dues rebate situation. We at the SLO chapter did just that, and made our position clear – we need the dues rebates to function. When national NOW was slow to respond, SLO NOW decided to change our dues structure for new and renewing members. We decided to remit only the required portion of the dues to national, with any additional dues payments considered a “donation” to the local chapter. That has worked! National is now sending us the rebates from last year’s dues collections. So that brings us to last month’s CA NOW state convention. I’m paraphrasing our delegate’s report here. This was an election conference. There was a rumor prior to the conference that an opposing slate of officers would try to take over CA NOW by bringing new “members” to vote at the conference (shades of the national conference, see above). Several new members of less than one month did attend, but were informed that the CA NOW bylaws require at least 6 mos. membership in good standing to be allowed to vote. These recent CA NOW members left soon after elections were held. Newly-re-elected president, Patty Ballasalma reported that the long-standing grievance regarding the Los Angeles NOW had been resolved, with a promised election of new officers to take place soon. However, some LA NOW members, but not all, received notice of the nomination process. California law requires that all chapter members be informed in writing. Apparently, rebate checks for LA NOW are still being sent to an address for a person who says she is no longer a member of NOW, but who is on the national NOW payroll as a consultant, and despite the fact that there hasn’t been an elected officer of this chapter for more than 5 years. Now they are attempting to “elect” new officers by only informing select LA NOW members. Patty also reported some interesting tidbits about the National board. First, during times of financial crisis, the National officers have traditionally waived their salaries. Not so with the current slate of officers. They have been accumulating the unpaid portions of their salaries as debt. CA NOW officers believe they will be using this as a tool for re-election, as in “re-elect us, or we will call in the debt,” which would destroy the organization financially. Apparently, there have already been some veiled comments that this will be a strategy. Second, they discontinued sending membership reports to chapters reportedly to save money. However, these reports are not being emailed on a regular basis, even when requested. One chapter reported that the only way they were able to get a report was to ask for a membership report for “credentialing purposes,” meaning for nomination and election of officers. None of this has dampened our local chapter’s enthusiasm for our mission. As they say, challenges are only opportunities in work clothes. All this internal strife has made CA NOW and SLO NOW more self-reliant – check out the newly revamped CA NOW website (on our links page) and please come by our table at Day with Creative Women in August at the Mission Plaza and share your thoughts with us. NOW History Lesson By Angie King National NOW encourages each chapter to review the history and workings of the organization with their membership every year. Briefly, there is a national membership organization that takes action in the political arena to bring women into the mainstream of American society, as our mission statement declares. These local grass root chapters decide national policy at an annual convention, and the executive board carries out those policy directives. NOW also has a political arm, the NOWPAC, which endorses candidates at the national level, and a Foundation, that engages in educational tax-exempt activities, such as Take Your Daughter to Work Day and Love Your Body Day, among others. In California the local chapters are also members of a state wide organization with a parallel structure: there is a membership association, which takes action at the state level based on policy directives agreed upon at a state convention; a PAC which endorses candidates at the state level; and a Foundation, which carries out tax-exempt activities. Membership is open to women and men who agree with the mission: to bring women into the mainstream of American society NOW, with equal privileges and responsibilities as men. NOW is a relatively new organization. The first meetings were in Washington DC in 1966 as a result of President John Kennedy’s call for a Commission on the status of women. That Commission (still in existence despite the best efforts of Republicans to kill it) remains an advisory body to the President on issues important to women. However, it does not take any action, which led some of the initial Commission members to break away and form NOW as a more overtly political action organization. Women’s issues have been around, however, far longer than the 1960’s. In 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony convened a women’s rights convention to demand some of the most basic equality tenets we now possess: the right of women to work, and to keep our earnings, and the right to be educated. While there were some calls for the vote, it was considered too radical at the time. By the turn of the 20th century, however, that time had come, and Suffragists took political action to secure the vote for women, including hunger strikes, chaining themselves to the White House fence, and marching with placards denouncing the President for failing to take action on their demands. When the 19th Amendment finally passed in 1920, women took to public life in great numbers. They ran for and won political office, they voted in legislators who vowed to curb child labor and reform oppressive factory working conditions, among other social justice reforms. And they became a political force with the creation of the League of Women Voters. As we were reminded just last month, February 1920 marked the 90th birthday of the founding of the LWV. Cribbing liberally from Julie Lynem’s Tribune article on the League, we learn that the League was the driving force behind the passage of the social justice reforms mentioned above. The League studies issues and comes to a consensus on a position, which they then advocate before legislative bodies. That makes them “equally opportunity disliked,” quoting a local SLO League member, because they do not always say what a politician wants to hear. The LWV does not endorse candidates for office, but it does grill them on their positions on League issues. In the article, members of the local League chapter, formed in the 1960’s, were asked for advice for the younger generation. Uniformly, they urged people to vote and be informed about their vote, to make that vote count. She says become a better citizen by listening to both sides of an argument and think about your own response. “It’s easy to turn on the TV or computer and make a decision based on a 30-second sound bite or blog posting.” Sage advice. I would add only, once you have developed a position, join NOW and do something about it!
To the National NOW Board:
As chapter coordinator for the San Luis Obispo (CA) chapter of NOW, I was dumbfounded to receive the news that the national NOW Executive Officers had taken some outlandish steps that appear to subvert the work of CA NOW and the NOW chapters in the state.
I am referring to the hiring of Maureen Otis as contact for the NOW Foundation and the attempt to mislead the CA Secretary of State into accepting a filing on “our” behalf of a known anti-feminist professional lobbyist, and the “dummy” filing of an agent for service at the address of a Dollar Discount Store in Los Angeles.
It is a sad day when progressive feminist organizations have to be so distrustful of their own leadership to question their loyalties, but the information we have leaves little other choice.
For almost half a century, the National Organization for Women has stood for women and girls, with members and donors contributing knowing that their money was going to a progressive feminist organization that is fighting for the rights of women and girls in this country. To hire a person tied to the Koch brothers with a right wing agenda such as Ms Otis is a slap in the face to our members and cannot be tolerated.
The Executive Officers’ hiring and associating NOW with Ms Otis is an outrage. I call on the National Board to act immediately to sever the employment/contractual relationship with Ms Otis and conduct a full and independent investigation to determine the extent of the relationship, contact, exchange of information and/or documents with and/or between NOW, officers, staff, and others, preventing any and all destruction of evidence by supervising access to the office. An independent forensic accounting must also be conducted to determine whether the integrity of NOW as an institution has been compromised by the national Executive Officers’ acts.
NOW members, through California NOW, have no control over the National Organization for Women (NOW), the use of its trademark or the National Organization for Women Foundation and its trademark. That responsibility primarily resides with the National Organization for Women Board of Directors. It isn’t hard to see the advantage to the right wing if they can control the NOW logo. Our logo has become a trusted symbol of initiatives and candidates who support women. We must act decisively in order for that symbol to retain its meaning.
The National NOW Board must be proactive in dealing with this issue by being out front of the story through honest, forthright action. By taking control and removing the Executive Officers now associated with Otis, NOW, the institution, and the brand has a chance to survive this travesty.
On behalf of the members of the San Luis Obispo CA chapter of NOW, I call on the national board to save the integrity of NOW by acting NOW!
Very truly yours,
Angie King
chapter coordinator
cc: CA NOW