A Woman's Place: Stirring Up Trouble

Have you ever read the book A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785 - 1812? It's an amazing historical account that challenges assumptions about how much women impacted nineteenth century society. If I remember correctly, at one point author and historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (who won the Pulitzer Prize) writes that women's considerable contributions to medicine, trade and agriculture, as well as the very fabric of community life, went unrecognized by the men who wrote the history books because men lived in a parallel world where women's work, even if absolutely necessary, was ignored and/or belittled.

Now you know why this story about politically subversive suffragist cookbooks reminded me of A Midwife's Tale. How absolutely brilliant is it, to use what might have been the only type of book sure to be "beneath" men's notice, to agitate for girls' education, the right to vote, and the abolition of alcohol, not to mention to share information on herbal birth control methods? I'm in love with my foremothers' ingenuity.

Laura Schenone, who has a very interesting sounding book of her own, writes, "Put together by women in suffrage organizations, these compendiums of recipes and opinions not only helped raise money but also gave women business experience as they collected recipes from community members, sold advertising, dealt with printers and most likely sold them at community events and fairs."

A recipe for "Pie for a Suffragist's Doubting Husband," from a 1915 suffragist cookbook calls for "1 qt milk of human kindness," and gives "8 Reasons: War, White Slavery, Child Labor, 800,000 Working Women, Bad Roads, Poisonous Water, Impure Food." Too bad those reasons sound so contemporary...

You want class consciousness? Here you go: "Mix the crust with tact and velvet gloves, using no sarcasm, especially with the upper crust. Upper crusts must be handled with extreme care for they quickly sour if manipulated roughly." (Which makes me think of John Lennon's famous comment during a 1963 Royal Variety Show: "Would those in the cheap seats clap their hands. The rest of you can rattle your jewelry.")

As someone else I admire once said, "To resist is to win."

-- Diane

Women and War

One of the reasons Madison Women for Peace formed in March 2003 was because we recognized that women are specifically affected by war. They are targeted with rape, physical assault, domestic violence (which increases in war-torn countries), forced displacement, even murder. They struggle to keep the family together and the children fed, even in the face of grinding poverty and often without help from male family members, who are fighting or in hiding.

At the same time, the stories and faces of women and children affected by war usually go unheard and unseen. But the evidence mounts:

• One conclusion of a recent Lancet study, based on interviews of nearly one thousand households across Iraq, was that some 100,000 more Iraqis have died since the U.S.-led invasion than would be predicted from pre-invasion mortality rates. That figure did attract some media attention. Less well covered was the conclusion that, "Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths." Or that, "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children."
  
• One report from Fallujah, Iraq - not independently confirmed - is that a mass grave dug by neighboring villagers contains "the bodies of 73 women and children who were burnt to death by a U.S. bombing attack."
  
• In Afghanistan, "where many men have been killed in more than two decades of war, at least 30 percent of all ... households are headed solely by women, according to UNICEF." Finding a job, when unemployment is estimated to be 70 percent, would be hard for anyone, but women are heavily discriminated against. "To survive and keep their families afloat, [Afghan women] depend on donations from charitable organizations, small business loans and the contributions of their children, many of whom are pulled from school to work street jobs."
  
• In Haiti, another in a continuing series of surges of violence directed against ousted president Aristide claimed the lives of as many as 12 people today. "A Reuters correspondent saw six bodies, including those of two women." Funny how the United States was interested enough in Haiti to support pushing Aristide out of power in February, but we seem to have forgotten about the country now. Some commentators have suggested that Bush's win on November 2 is being interpreted by the unelected Haitian government as a license to continue the repression and killing: "You've also got the morally repugnant elite, the 150 families who have golfing buddies in the Republican party, who are now emboldened by Bush's election."

We must continue to tell these stories, to look for our sisters' faces, and to demand justice and peace in all of our names.

Milwaukee Election Protection

Last week several of us in the Women for Peace group went to Milwaukee to serve as Election Protection Volunteers. In the context of the historical and consistent voter oppression faced in predominately African American neighborhoods, we were grateful not to witness overt challenging and aggressive attempts at voter suppression. However, we witnessed a number of troubles that highlight the inherent problems we have here in the U.S. regarding ease of voting, and more importantly, education about our candidates.

I think it would be fair to say that at least half of the voters in the ward we served were voting for the first time. One elderly gentleman shared that he had been voting in that polling place his entire life and stated that at the end of the day of the last election he was the 34th voter. At 4:30 this year there were 540 votes cast in that same ward. This is, of course, good news. However, the obvious consequence of this is that a couple hundred individuals had never seen a ballot before. But, that alone didn’t seem to explain the difficulties folks had with the ballot. A great deal of people (including myself) found the ballot confusing and had questions ranging from how to select the candidate (i.e., what do you do with the arrows?!) to uncertainty about straight party voting. Many people could not read well. The most common problems we saw were that folks were double voting for a presidential candidate because the “write-in” slot for president did not actually say “write-in” and people thought if there were voting for president they had to also fill in that arrow. Some people thought that since “democrat” was listed first in the straight party that all the names in the left hand column were democrat (and selected all of them) and all the names in the right hand side were republican. Unfortunately, the poll watchers were not well trained and when voters asked for assistance they were brushed off and referred to the “SAMPLE” ballot. The sample ballot was the actual ballot xeroxed on yellow paper with the word sample on it. On its own it offered no additional assistance. It was clear that at the very least one person needed to be available at all times at the voting booths to field the high volume of questions. Our responsibility was supposed to be to observe, but we were welcomed to assist. In the absence of that extra assistance I would seriously question whether voters were able to cast the vote they intended.

A skeptic might point out that the voting machines are intended to catch errors in the ballot. However, the voting machine delivered to this polling site broke when the first vote was cast and remained broken for an hour. Over 100 votes were cast during that time. For the remainder of the day we had to ensure that ballots were entered in upside down to increase the likelihood the machine would read them correctly.

The most challenging thing I witnessed, however, was the blind faith put into the Democratic Party. Mind you, I wanted Bush out of office more than anybody, but I voted for Kerry because of the forced 2-party system and vowed to work hard for change if he was elected. So, while it was very heart-opening to see an entire community united and passionate about social change, I felt sad. I wanted to say, “What have the democrats done for you lately?” Bush’s cabinet was more diverse than Clinton’s, token gestures like MLK day have been delivered by Republicans, and Welfare to Work – Clinton. This isn’t a pro-Republican argument, but it’s questioning the hallo effect that Democrats sport. So, here’s why I felt sad – if the constituents in this neighborhood (or the rest of the country, honestly) had access to campaign information on ALL of the candidates I do not believe they would have voted for the democratic candidate. This obviously speaks to campaign reform and a need to influence the higher-ups who can create change. But, it should also speak to progressives. There are large sections of our population who need information and, I believe, would join us in solidarity. Shame on us for not making a larger effort to be inclusive and have the progressive voice also be represented by people of color.