Women's Enews announces its 21 Leaders
for the 21st Century--2003,
an awe-inspiring, reader-nominated list, with ages between 13
and 83;
each making news, often at great personal risk, by confronting
issues
of particular concern to women.
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--Women's Enews announced
today
its 21 Leaders for the 21st Century--2003, an awe-inspiring, reader-nominated
group of newsmakers demonstrating extraordinary commitment to creating
change on behalf of all women.
"And we are filled with excitement,
for what could be more cheerful, charge
our engines more, than reminding ourselves and all our readers
the wonderful
dedication and accomplishments of our contemporaries?" said
Rita Henley
Jensen, Women's Enews editor in chief.
Readers Submitted 300 Nominees
Women's Enews advisory board made the final
selection from a list of 300
nominees submitted by readers. Each leader makes news by confronting,
often at great personal risk, issues of particular concern to
women. Women's Enews will honor each of the 21 Leaders for the
21st Century at its annual celebratory dinner, to be held in New
York on May 20th. The event will be chaired by noted broadcast
journalist Mary Alice Williams.
"The quality of the nominations and
the detailed biographies we received were
thrilling," said Henley Jensen. "The responses were
far beyond what we had
hoped, full of exciting, newsworthy leaders making fantastic contributions
to
the well-being of women. I read each submission and was profoundly
touched
by the sincerity of the nominators and the idealism and leadership
of the
nominees."
The 21 Leaders, with ages that range from
13 to 83, were selected after the
Women's Enews board members and staff pored over the nominees'
biographies for hours, researching, asking questions, seeking
balance and diversity in every measurable way.
"In the end, we are delighted with
our choices, but still regret that we have
but 21 leaders to honor," Henley Jensen added.
Over the next three days, Women's Enews
will publish biographies of the
21 leaders--2003, but for now, we will tell you just a bit more
about them:
Ernesta Ballard, founder, Philadelphia
chapter of the National Organization
for Women; founder and first chair of Women's Way, a fund-raising
organization supporting women's organizations in the Philadelphia
region. Now 83, she remains active in the leadership of Women's
Way.
Martha Burk, chair, National Council
of Women's Organizations. Burk has made headlines most recently
for her outspoken campaign to persuade the Augusta National Golf
Club to admit women as members.
Susan Burton, founder, A New Way
of Life foundation, which assists newly
released inmates back into civilian life and helps them find job-training
and
other social services.
Luisa Cabal, human rights attorney,
Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. Cabal represented a Mexican
teen who was denied an abortion after becoming pregnant by her
rapist.
Esther Chavez Cano, founder, Casa
Amiga, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The
organization offers medical, legal and psychological aid to victims
of domestic
violence and sexual assault in a city rocked by the murders and
disappearances of at least 280 women and girls over the last 10
years.
Eileen Fisher, designer. Her goal
is not only to design a popular clothing line,
but also to create a business environment in which her employees
find joy and
satisfaction in their work. The advertisements for Eileen Fisher
clothing is
remarkable for the images of women featured, not stick-thin models,
but her
employees. The company also runs socially responsible programs
for women
in the United States and abroad.
Swanee Hunt, former U.S. ambassador
to Austria. She returned from Europe determined to change how
wars are fought and peace realized. She created Women Waging Peace
and is director, Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's
John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Rana Husseini, reporter with the
Jordan Times. Husseini was assigned the
crime beat at the newspaper and began to expose the legal system's
tolerance
for the murders of girls and young women by their family members.
In addition, Women's Enews will award Rana Husseini the Ida B.
Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism. She continues to report
the story of honor killings of Jordanian women despite accusations
that she is tarnishing the nation's image and responding to Western
influences.
Kenya Jordana James, at age 13,
is editorial director and founder of
Blackgirl Magazine, a bimonthly publication that promotes healthy
images to
black teens while covering lifestyle and entertainment news.
Jill June, president, Planned Parenthood
of Greater Iowa. In 2002 despite the threat of being jailed, June
refused to turn over the results of hundreds of
pregnancy tests to a district attorney investigating the death
of a newborn.
Ann Kaplan, managing director at
Goldman Sachs. Kaplan heads a group
dedicated to increasing the firm's involvement with women clients
worldwide
and has leveraged her influence on behalf of women throughout
the elite
financial world. She also helped Smith College launch a women's
financial
education program with $2.5 million in seed money.
Her Highness Sheika Sabika Al-Khalifa,
of Bahrain. Sabika led the call
to vote in the country's 2002 election, its first democratic election
in 25 years.
She is also leading a campaign in Bahrain to advance women's rights
by
changing "the image of Bahraini women."
Jill Miller, executive director
of Women Work! The National Network For
Women's Employment. Miller manages the more than 1,000 programs
that
serve at least 400,000 women annually in the areas of employment,
training
and education. She also chaired a United Nations expert panel
on vocational
training and lifelong learning of women.
Asseta Nagbila, coordinator of the
Hunger Project's literacy classes, health
and nutrition programs and training courses for women in her village
in
Burkina Faso. In a nation where women are not entitled to own
land, the
unusual project focuses on women gaining the rewards for what
has been unpaid labor.
Judy Norsigian, executive director
of the Boston Women's Health Book
Collective, which published the first edition of "Our Bodies,
Ourselves" in
1970. As a perhaps the most reliable source on women's health,
Norsigian has continued to provide thousands of women each year
the information they need to remain well or cope with illness.
Milbry Polk, activist and co-author
of "Women of Discovery: A Celebration of Intrepid Women Who
Explored the World," a chronicle of the stories of 84 of
history's greatest women explorers whose achievements might otherwise
be
lost. She writes that "the story of women explorers is as
old as time, as old
as myth, and as real as memory." Milbry is also working to
ensure that
discoveries of women explorers and scientists are included in
public school
history curricula.
Kavita Ramdas, president and chief
executive officer, Global Fund for Women, a grantmaking foundation
supporting women's human rights organizations around the world.
Born and raised in India and educated in the United States, Ramdas
has spent her professional life working on issues of poverty,
economic development and population. She has brought her international
knowledge and understandings to bear as the fund attempts to assist
women's economic independence, increase girls' access to education
and stop violence against women.
Amy Richards, co-author of "MANIFESTA:
Young Women, Feminism, and the Future." Through her ability
to strongly articulate the experiences and views of a new generation
of feminism--Third Wave feminism--she kindled its growth and broadened
its appeal. She is also a co-founder of the Third Wave
Foundation, which strives to combat inequities and build lasting
financial
support for social activism around the country by empowering young
women.
Elaine Roulet, creator, the Children's
Center program at Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility in New York. The center and other programs
founded
by this member of a Roman Catholic religious order provide mothers
in prison
opportunities to be with their children, including living with
their newborns
for up to one year and a seasonal day camp.
Elizabeth Sackler, philanthropist.
In 2002, Sackler created a permanent home for Judy Chicago's groundbreaking
piece "The Dinner Party" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
and funded a permanent new wing of the museum dedicated to art
that impacts or addresses women. She also sponsored a major exhibition
of Chicago's other works at Washington, D.C.'s National Museum
of Women in the Arts.
Henna White, Jewish community liaison
for a Brooklyn, N.Y. district attorney where she reaches out to
battered women in the close-knit Hassidic enclaves. White also
co-founded Mothers to Mothers, which promoted dialogue and understanding
between Jewish and African American women in the Crown Heights
section of Brooklyn following the 1991 riots there.
The leaders all have made a significant
impact on the lives of women and girls
by alleviating a problem; striving for change; using the law to
pursue peace and justice; influencing the unaware; or showing
others their human potential and possibility for change. We are
pleased to honor them as our 21Leaders for the 21st Century.
Jordan Lite is assistant managing editor
of Women's Enews.
Sister Dianna Ortiz, an Ursuline
nun, is a human rights activist and advocate for victims of torture.
She is co-founder and director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors
Support Coalition International (TASSC), an
organization dedicated to ending the practice or torture by mobilizing
the collective voices of torture survivors.
In 1987, she went to the western highlands
of Guatemala to teach Mayan children to read and write (in Spanish
and their native language, K'anjobal). After months of receiving
threats, Sister Ortiz was abducted and brutally raped by armed
men in November 1989. She recounts this ordeal, and her struggle
to heal herself and uncover the truth about her abductors in her
new memoir, The Blindfold's Eyes, written with Patricia Davis.
One of the men overseeing the torture appeared to be American.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded that:
"Sister Ortiz was placed under surveillance and threatened,
then kidnapped and tortured, and that agents of the government
of Guatemala were responsible for these crimes. . . including
violating Dianna Ortiz's rights to 'humane treatment, personal
liberty, a fair trial, privacy, freedom of conscience and of religion,
freedom of association and judicial protection.'" Her ordeal
did not end with her escape.
Her torment continued as she sought answers
from the U.S. government about the identity of her torturers.
Ortiz's raw honesty and capacity to articulate the agony she suffered
compelled the United States to declassify long-secret files on
Guatemala, and shed light on some of the darkest moments of Guatemalan
history and American foreign policy.
Baghdad -- A candle clutched in
one hand, Elizabeth Boardman is bundled up in a chill desert wind,
standing outside the Al-Taji power-generating plant 15 miles from
downtown Baghdad.
The plant was destroyed by U.S. bombs in
the 1991 Gulf War, and if war comes again, as seems increasingly
likely, American missiles may once again reduce the plant to rubble.
Elizabeth Boardman, 61, is here to "bear witness," doing
her part, however small, and possibly in vain, to try to stop
it.
"Saddam Hussein doesn't know me, and
I'm not here to support him," says Boardman, one of several
dozen foreign peace activists conducting a vigil in the cold Iraq
night air. "I'm here to stand with the Iraqi people, who
are suffering from U.S. policies that I think are completely wrong."
With war perhaps just weeks away, activists
such as Boardman have been coming to Iraq, and some say they will
stay even if the bombs start to fall and American soldiers fight
their way through the streets of Baghdad. They are here, they
insist, not to support the regime of Saddam Hussein -- "He's
an evil man," says Boardman -- but to remind the world of
the damage a war can bring.
Their presence angers critics who regard
activists like Boardman as propaganda dupes of a totalitarian
regime.
When actor and Marin County resident Sean
Penn visited Baghdad last week, he was labeled by some as a latter-day
"Hanoi Jane," a reference to actress Jane Fonda's notorious
visit to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Further ammunition
for such criticisms came when the Iraqi government claimed that
Penn agreed with its contention that the regime possessed no weapons
of mass destruction, an assertion angrily denied by Penn.
Boardman insists she is not driven by politics
or ideology. The executive director of the North and South Market
Adult Day Health Center, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides
medical care for senior citizens, Boardman describes herself as
a "hard-core Quaker pacifist."
FAMILY TRADITION
The daughter of a World War II conscientious
objector, she protested U.S. intervention in Central America in
the 1980s by withholding her federal income taxes. Now, with a
war in Iraq seeming closer, she decided that Baghdad was the place
to be.
"My daughter said, 'Oh, Mom, you would
do this,' and a lot of other friends and family worry about me
here. And I was petrified for a while after I made the decision
to come," she says. "But I just remind people now of
the Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers who will be in real danger.
They're the ones to worry about."
Standing alongside Boardman outside the
Al-Taji power plant are Catholics, Mennonites, Jews and Buddhists,
prompted to come here, they say, by deeply held religious beliefs.
"The principal thing for me, for my
soul, is to identify with the victims," says Charles Liteky,
a former Army chaplain who says he plans to stay if war comes.
A San Francisco resident whose long career as an anti-war activist
has earned him two stints in federal prison, Liteky spends most
of his days here at a local orphanage run by Catholic nuns, helping
children with cerebral palsy to eat and play.
"I may be able to save a child in
the orphanage during the bombing, or administer first aid to somebody
in the neighborhood with the skills I learned in Vietnam,"
says the 71-year-old Liteky, who was awarded the Congressional
Medal of Honor in 1968 when he carried 22 wounded soldiers to
safety during heavy combat in Vietnam.
Asked whether he would do the same for
a wounded American soldier fighting in Baghdad, Liteky responds,
"Of course I'd go get him, no matter whether he was an American
soldier or an Iraqi soldier. They're all human beings."
VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS
Liteky, Boardman and other activists are
members of an organization called Voices in the Wilderness, whose
headquarters is in Chicago. The anti-war group has brought dozens
of American delegations to Iraq since 1996 to protest U.S. policies
toward Iraq and U.N. sanctions, in effect since the 1991 Gulf
War, saying they have unfairly affected Iraq's civilian population.
After Voices in the Wilderness was fined
$20,000 by the Treasury Department for violating the U.S. ban
on travel to Iraq, members of the group traveled to Washington
earlier this month to deliver payment -- in virtually worthless
Iraqi dinars.
Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the
Wilderness, acknowledges that her organization's credibility was
tarred last September when it staged a demonstration outside U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad. Critics point out that demonstrations
except those staged by the government are usually banned.
It was "a disaster," she said.
"We're here to protest the fact that U.N. sanctions and U.S.
bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of children in the past
decade, but we get saddled somehow with being dupes."
Many of the activists seemed aware of the
contradictions of protesting against U.S. policies in a country
where free speech is sharply curtailed.
"If I got up in a church service here
and yelled, 'Down with Saddam,' I'd be tossed out of here, I wouldn't
last 24 hours," admits the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic
Maryknoll priest and longtime anti-war activist who just ended
a two-week visit with other religious activists, during which
they held a service at a local Chaldean Catholic church and read
a statement opposing a U.S. war. "There's control here that
I've never seen."
Many of the visiting Americans say that
whatever their misgivings about the political situation, they
have been surprised by the warmth and hospitality of everyday
Iraqis they have met.
"I expected people here to be very
angry at Americans, but I've found that they make distinctions
between the American people and our government, which is a lot
more than our government does in return," said Sister Simone
Campbell,
a Catholic nun who is a Sacramento lobbyist
for Jericho, an interfaith social- services coalition. "I
met a mother who can't get chemotherapy for her young boy with
cancer because the medicines are viewed as 'dual use,' "
referring to materials that the United Nations says could be used
for chemical or biological weapons. "It broke my heart. But
she was very sweet. She wasn't angry at me."
WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS
But even those who say they are willing
to stay even if war comes know there may be little they can do
once the shooting starts.
"We couldn't stop a bomb with our
bodies, and we can't stop the war," said Kelly.
Nevertheless, for Boardman, who plans to
return to the Bay Area early next month, her visit to Iraq has
been more than a quixotic gesture. In addition to resuming her
day job, she says, she will be undertaking a hectic round of speaking
engagements.
"I hope that my experience here can
help invigorate people back home who may think war is inevitable
and are losing hope," she says.
In the wake of the Enron scandal, and
Bush's bailing out of the Kyoto Protocol, Greenpeace and other
groups are targeting ExxonMobil as the number one political corrupter.
Greenpeace's new report, Denial and
Deception: A Chronicle of ExxonMobil's Efforts to Corrupt the
Global Warming Debate, details more than a decade of deliberate
and persistent efforts by ExxonMobil and its front groups to derail
the evolving global warming treaty and the scientific consensus
that urgently supports the international agreement. The report
also delves into emerging ties between the ExxonMobil agenda and
the damaging global warming legacy of the Bush Administration.
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Addresses Anti-War Gatherers at D.C. Rally
Saturday, October 26th, 2002
ANSWER Anti War Rally
Washington, D.C.
I cannot come here to this place at this time with
all of you without first saying thank you Paul Wellstone . . .
for your wonderful example of true warrior patriotism, fighting
for our health care, for education, for our children, against
discrimination, against war. Thank you Paul and the Wellstone
family.
And thank you for being here today. We
know that when good men do nothing . . . evil triumphs.
That is why we are here today, so that
it can never be said, that we good people of America did nothing
in the face of evil.
Evil is all around us today - in every
corner of the world. And sadly, even our own country is not the
same as it used to be.
The good ol' days are gone, but the bad
ol' boys remain.
And dangerous changes are daily taking
place.
Even after a jury found that the FBI went
too far against Judy Bari and Darryl Cherney, their families--and
us--still don't have justice.
The USA Patriot Act and the Secret Evidence
Act erode our constitutional rights.
Hard-earned savings of generations of Americans
are being spent on the military and intelligence communities while
poverty and homelessness affect millions in every city and town
of America.
And now this Administration proposes to
take this country to war against Iraq.
Yet, all across our country and those of
our allies, veterans of the last war against Iraq still suffer
the health effects of Gulf War Syndrome. Our Vietnam era veterans
still suffer from exposure to Agent Orange while a new generation
of veterans are reeling from depleted uranium.
And they have not been taken care of.
Sadly, 25 percent of all the homeless men
and women who sleep on our streets every night, are our veterans
to whom we've already broken our promise.
How many more veterans does George W. Bush
want to create to whom we'll break our promise?
Mr. President, please look at the veterans
who are sleeping on the streets right across from your window
in the White House, Mr. President, please look.
Our government can monitor our cell phones,
the keystrokes on our computer keyboards, the books we read at
the library, but they can't give a warm meal and shelter to the
veterans who have served our country and who are now in need.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
And what about the young men and women
who now find themselves on the frontlines deployed in far away
places like Oman, Djibouti, Bahrain, Philippines, Uzbekistan,
George Bush signed an executive order waiving
the Administration's obligation to pay them their high deployment
overtime pay!
If he would do this to our troops, what
will he do to us?
We need only remember Florida to answer
that question!
And Let us remember . . .
It's easy to talk war . . . if you've never
been to war.
George Bush, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz, Rush Limbaugh, where were you when America called?
We slid into the Vietnam War with a Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution that turned out not to be true.
Your strength and courage is now being
tested.
We can stand back and do nothing or we
can protect this Republic, over America, from abuse.
We gathered here today, represent every
slice of America.
We are blacks and whites, Latinos, Asians,
and Native Americans; Christians, Muslims, and Jews; gay, lesbian,
and straight; immigrants and native-born Americans; rich and poor
and we've all come together as one.
Despite all our differences, we are here
today with one desire - to restore the true ideals of America.
Don't be fooled by what they may say about
you: You are the true patriots.
Our first President George spoke about
you.
He spoke about what happens to true patriots
and how we might know them.
He warned us to beware the empty bellicose
flag waving of those who hold themselves out to be patriots. He
warned us against false patriotism. He cautioned that the true
patriot, the one who most loves his country, will become suspect
and odious and they will watch while the false patriots usurp
the applause of the people; the true patriots will know that our
country's founding interests are being surrendered.
That first President George was George
Washington. Read his farewell address.
We've known true patriots in our day: like
JFK, RFK, and MLK.
But you too are patriots. And today, you
are standing up for what is right and good about our country.
We have become the guardians for an America
that will be loved around the world and not just feared.
Against today's backdrop of Washington
DC, the most powerful capital city on the planet, I dream of the
day when the power of love replaces the power of might.
That will be the day when our world will
know the blessings of peace and our Republic will be in the hands
of the people.
Thank you.
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Habiba Sarabi Named
New Minister of Women Affairs in Afghanistan
Being named Minister of Women Affairs in
Afghanistan is not for the meek. As the last Minister belatedly
appointed by the new government, Habiba Sarabi will have to continue
to be a concerted and courageous activist to fulfill her new role
in a country that only last year was known for its policies of
gender apartheid.
Habiba Sarabi's commitment to equality
is rooted in her upbringing. "I was the only girl in a family
with four sons and did not get much attention from my father.
I decided that I wanted to struggle for women's rights and enjoy
the same status that my brothers had." Her determination
brought her to a life of activism that reaches beyond her personal
life.
During the Taliban rule, Habiba Sarabi
risked her life as a teacher for girls in underground schools.
In 1998 Ms. Sarabi joined the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL),
a Global Fund grantee, which teaches young girls their native
languages, basic education and interpretations of the Koran that
honor their lives as girls. In her three years with AIL, Habiba
worked as a Teacher Trainer, facilitated human rights workshops,
managed AIL's Health Education and Training program and then became
General Manager of the entire organization. Habiba has worked
with many nongovernmental organizations on health issues and income-generating
activities for women - experiences that will surely guide her
new role as Minister of Women Affairs in Afghanistan.
Author of "Desert Flower:
The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad"
UNFPA GOODWILL AMBASSADOR, WARIS DIRIE,
WINS AWARD
UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK, 17 April 2001
– The United Nations Population Fund’s Goodwill Ambassador
for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, Waris Dirie,
has been honoured by a United States charity, Childhelp USA, for
her efforts to curb the practice. Childhelp, which is dedicated
to the prevention and treatment of child abuse, granted her its
Guardian Angel Award on 12 April at a ceremony in Scottsdale,
Arizona.
The Goodwill Ambassador was recognized
for her incredible bravery and strength, according to a Childhelp
statement read by an Arizona television news anchorwoman, Robin
Sewell. “It’s hard to imagine the physical pain that
Waris Dirie endured as a child and the emotional pain she has
had to cope with as an adult. … Waris has truly turned her
'pain' into a 'platform'. Her efforts are bringing hope to the
victims of FGM.”
Somali-born Ms. Dirie works with the UNFPA
to help eliminate FGM, which is performed on about two million
women and girls annually. She speaks to policy makers, donors
and the public worldwide about FGM and the need to support programmes
to prevent and end it. Her book, Desert Flower, which narrates
her experience with the practice, has been a best-seller in Europe
and she has been featured on the cover of popular magazines such
as Reader’s Digest and Marie Claire
The UNFPA is the world’s largest multilateral
source of population assistance. Since it became operational in
1969, it has provided more than $5 billion in assistance to developing
countries. The United Nations General Assembly has welcomed the
positive contributions the Fund has made since then in improving
the quality of human life.
"Desert
Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad"is
the story of Waris Dirie. Dirie's beauty led her to a career as
a fashion model, but her experience as a young girl subjected
to circumcision led her to speakout against the practice and eventually
become a human rights ambassador to the United Nations. In this
book, Dirie describes her journey from her childhood in a traditional
family of desert nomads in Somalia. When her father attempts to
arrange for 12-year-old Dirie to marry an old man, the strong-willed
girl flees her family and her culture's stifling traditions for
women. She runs away to Mogadishu and eventually gets a job as
a maid for an uncle whois the Somalian ambassador to England.
When the uncle returns to Somalia, Dirie stays in London and begins
a career as a model. The most compelling portions of Dirie's story
are her graphic portrayals of the practice of female genital mutilation
and the impact it has on women who long to control their bodies
and their lives."
~~~~~~
Widely practised in many African countries,
female genital mutilation (FGM) involves partial or total removal
of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female
genital organs whether for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons.
"Because women and girls are not valued
equally as human beings, they are treated as less than such. Female
genital mutilation is one example of this that has to be stopped,"
said Ms. Dirie.
A native of Somalia born into a nomadic
family, Ms. Dirie survived the traditional form of female genital
mutilation that kills hundreds of women every year -- a younger
sister and two cousins died from the procedure.
At age 13, just before she could be married
off to an elderly man, she ran away from home. Eventually she
found her way to London. After achieving international success
as a fashion model, she decided to tell the public of her ordeal
and to dedicate her life to ending FGM and improving the status
of women.
St. Paul, Minn. -- Sen. Paul Wellstone,
D-Minn., a leading liberal voice in Congress who was locked in
a tight re-election campaign, was killed in a plane crash in his
home state Friday.
His high school sweetheart and wife of
39 years, Sheila, their 33-year-old daughter, Marcia Markuson,
three campaign aides and two pilots also died in the fiery crash,
which obliterated the 11-seat turboprop among the pine trees.
Wellstone was on his way to the funeral
of a state lawmaker's father when the plane went down in a light
snow near Eveleth in northern Minnesota. The cause of the crash
was under investigation.
"As adults, we don't have a lot of
heroes. But he was my hero," said Charlie Bulman, one of
thousands of Wellstone supporters who gathered on the steps of
the state Capitol in St. Paul Friday night to mourn the senator.
Wellstone was a leading champion of liberal
causes in the "happy warrior" tradition of Minnesota
Democratic politics.
But he also was a product of the turbulent
1960s --one of the decade's few activist organizers to wind up
in the Senate. He was, as Mother Jones magazine noted, "the
first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate."
In keeping with his maverick politics,
the 58-year-old former political science professor and community
organizer was a lonely dissenter in one of the last votes he cast
before Congress went home to campaign last week. He was the only
senator facing a tough re-election fight to vote against empowering
President Bush to use military force against Iraq. To have done
otherwise, he said, would have violated the principles that guided
his whole career.
In his 12 years in the Senate, Wellstone,
often described as one of Congress' last unabashed liberals, rejected
the notion that government had grown too big. He stood as a rarely
wavering advocate of its use to help the poor.
"Paul Wellstone was the soul of the
Senate," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD. "He
was one of the most noble and courageous men I have ever known.
The nation has lost a fearless public servant and tireless advocate
for justice."
Even in his own party, Wellstone often
was in the minority, sometimes a lone dissenter. He made long
speeches --too long in the view of some colleagues. But his speeches,
frequently delivered after most senators had gone home, nearly
always conveyed a personal passion and sense of commitment that
stood out from the scripted rhetoric so common in Congress these
days.
His causes were legion: universal health
care, more federal spending for education, safeguards for human
and civil rights, ethics in government, worker protections and
better mental health care. He cast one of the few Senate votes
against the 1996 welfare reform law, which trimmed benefits, and
voted in 1991 against authorizing the Persian Gulf War.
In one of his last fights, he held out
against bankruptcy law chanages that were widely supported in
Congress, arguing they would benefit banks and credit card companies
at the expense of financially strapped consumers.
He worked extensively across the Senate's
political and ideological divide to pass bills on an array of
issues, including a ban on gifts to lawmakers, domestic violence
legislation, insurance coverage for mental illness and agricultural
issues. He was widely liked and admired for his principled positions,
even by his political foes.
Former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole
choked up Friday when he told a television interviewer that Wellstone
was "a decent, genuine guy who had a different philosophy
from almost everyone else in the Senate."
Before he entered politics, Wellstone in
1969 was a political science professor at Carleton College in
Northfield, Minn. He was active in the liberal causes of the day
and, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, was almost fired
for being too focused on his activist pursuits, which included
leading protests in sympathy with striking Hormel meatpackers.
He got arrested picketing a bank that had foreclosed on farmers.
Wellstone ran unsuccessfully for state
auditor and managed Jesse Jackson's 1968 presidental campaign
in Minnesota. In keeping with his audacious style, when he ran
for office again, he didn't bother with a midlevel post, but aimed
high: a 1990 challenge to Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn.
Wellstone pulled off the year's only upset,
winning by two percentage points. Six years later, Wellstone and
Boschwitz staged a rematch, and Wellstone won again, this time
by a comfortable margiin.
He made a few early mistakes, some of which
would haunt him. After he won his first Senate race, he promised
to serve only two terms, figuring it sounded right at the time,
he later said. But he loved the Senate and didn't want to leave
without accomplishing more goals, especially at a time of national
crisis, he said in explaining why he broke the pledge to seek
a third term in 2002.
He also infuriated veterans groups when
he went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to oppose the Persian
Gulf War. He apologized and went on to champion veterans' causes.
In 1997, Wellstone organized a poverty
tour reminiscent of a trip taken by Robert F. Kennedy 30 years
earlier, and the next year he signaled his intention to run for
the Democratic presidential nomination. But in early 1999, a bad
back forced him to drop out.
Wellstone is surved by two sons, David
and Mark, and six grandchildren.
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Dwarko Sundrani
One of the last active
direct disciples|
of Mahatma Gandhi
Graced the
Bay Area
with a visit
October 18 -
28, 2002
Dwarkoji has devoted his entire
life
to working with the poorest of the poor
in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India
At 80 years old, he is making
this long journey to the U.S. It may be our last chance in the
Bay Area to be with him
Joe
Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 26, 2002
Medea Benjamin is not only one of
San Francisco's leading activists, she's the Zelig of political
protest. And with the country inching toward war, the 50-year-old
Noe Valley resident has never been in so many different scenes.
She made national news for interrupting
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he pitched his war plan to
Congress last month. And for getting arrested at President Bush's
August speech in Stockton. And for her street theater outside
Vice President's Dick Cheney's appearance that month in San Francisco.
In her quest to stop a U.S. invasion of
Iraq, the former Green Party U.S. Senate nominee banged pots and
pans in front of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's Washington,
D.C., home before dawn last month (a "wake-up call"),
and spoke Thursday at the United Nations press correspondent's
club.
Saturday, Benjamin will speak in Washington,
D.C., at what's expected to be the nation's largest post-Sept.
11 anti-war demonstration. In San Francisco, the same kind of
event will begin with an 11 a.m. march starting from Justin Herman
Plaza and ending with a 1 p.m. rally at Civic Center Plaza. Similar
demonstrations will be held in other U.S. cities and around the
world.
The San Francisco and Washington events
are co-sponsored by the San Francisco nonprofit Global Exchange,
which Benjamin co-founded in 1988. The group is a vocal advocate
of peace, justice and other social issues.
For the past 20 years that she has lived
in San Francisco, Benjamin has appeared seemingly everywhere,
like the fictional Zelig of the Woody Allen film, speaking out
on everything from corporate sweatshops to self-rule in East Timor
to California's energy crisis.
AUTHOR AND LECTURER
While the current anti-war movement has
her dipping deep into her bottomless bag of activist theater tricks,
Benjamin is more than just a sidewalk vaudevillian. She's the
author of eight books, official observer at a dozen international
elections and, thanks in part to contacts developed during her
unsuccessful Senate run two years ago, has developed into a popular
lecturer. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader calls her "a rising
player" on the national progressive scene.
Five feet tall, and no more than a veggie
burrito over 100 pounds, she can't lift her left arm above her
head, the result of having it twisted behind her back during the
estimated four dozen times she's been escorted off the premises.
She rarely spends more than a few hours in jail, and San Francisco
police Lt. Morris Tabak said, "She's always been very professional
when we've dealt with her."
For the past two months, this mother of
two -- one is a 12-year-old; the other, from a previous marriage,
just graduated from college -- has shuttled back and forth to
Washington, sleeping on friends' couches while she lobbies legislators
by day and corrals fellow anti-war activists by night. Colleagues
and adversaries agree she's tireless. The toll: She and her husband
spend only two days a month together.
"While you see Medea all of these
places, what she's really good at is organizing behind the scenes,"
said Deborah James, who has worked with her at Global Exchange
for nine years. James wouldn't have been able to help lead the
widely-noted interruption of Secretary of State Colin Powell at
Earth Summit II in South Africa last month, "without knowing
Medea. I was kind of trying to think what she would do there."
WORLD OF CHANGES
Yet before she adopted the name "Medea"
as a Tufts University freshman, she was Susie Benjamin, self-described
"nice Jewish girl from Long Island." A high school cheerleader
who dated the school's top athlete. Benjamin jokes that her mother's
favorite form of protest was "returning something at Saks
that she had kept for a year."
Her father, Al, is a well-to-do developer,
who says he has "donated hundreds of thousands" of dollars
to Global Exchange over its 14-year-history. No strings attached,
say both Al and Medea Benjamin. Al has supported Jewish- related
charities; Medea supports a Palestinian state. Said the daughter,
with a smile, "It's best that families don't talk about some
things."
"I admire Susie because she is always
true to her own heart," said Al Benjamin; only her family
still calls her "Susie." "Even when I totally don't
agree with what she's saying."
Young Susie Benjamin's first major experience
with the big, bad world happened when her older sister's GI boyfriend
mailed home the ear of a Viet Cong. It jolted the 15-year-old
Benjamin out of her insulated Long Island life.
During a trip with friends to Tijuana two
years later, she was shocked to see young children starving on
the street.
She spent a year at Tufts, and then told
her parents she would continue her studies abroad. Once overseas,
however, she dropped out of school and bolted across Europe and
Africa. She hitchhiked alone, supporting herself by teaching English,
picking grapes and doing odd jobs.
By now, Susie had become Medea. Long fascinated
by the Greek tragedies, she tried on other names -- "Io"
Benjamin didn't ring -- until deciding to reclaim "Medea."
"I just didn't believe the story,"
she said wryly of the classic tragedy. "What woman would
kill her kids for a guy? I think she was a strong woman, and some
people just made up the story to discredit her."
RAPED IN FRANCE
Overseas, her fearlessness blossomed. When
Benjamin was 19, she was raped in France by a man who gave her
a ride. Yet she continues hitchhiking, spending last summer thumbing
across Sicily with her college-age daughter. "Once, I got
mugged two blocks from work (in the Mission District)," she
said. "Does that mean I stop walking to work?"
In Africa, she gravitated to refugee camps,
trying to save children from starvation. She tears up, remembering
the 3-year-old boy dying in her arms in Mozambique. Blunting the
world's inequities that allow some children to starve and others
to grow up in comfort would become her life work.
She returned to New York and, after passing
undergraduate equivalency tests,
earned master's degrees in economics and
public health. She returned to Africa and then went to Cuba with
her first husband, who was coach of the national basketball team;
Benjamin hates sports.
Yet at first, Cuba's comparative social
equality "made it seem like I died and went to heaven."
Then she bumped into the limitations of free speech while working
at a Communist-run newspaper; she was deported after daring to
write an anti-government article. She headed to San Francisco
in 1983 for a job with Food First/The Institute for Food and Development
Policy. She and her husband split up shortly afterward.
By the time she landed in San Francisco,
she began thinking about doing something that would incorporate
her growing number of interests.
UNBOUNDED CURIOSITY
"Medea likes to say that I radicalized
her, but she was already pretty radicalized by the time she got
(to college)," said Joan Gussow, a professor emeritus of
nutrition and education at Teachers College Columbia University,
where Benjamin earned her public health degree. "She was
always asking questions, always wanting to know how things fit
together."
Benjamin believes all of her pet struggles
are related. Whether it's Cambodian sweatshops or California energy
providers, Benjamin said they're all the fruits of wealthy corporations
owning mainstream media, holding politicians in a money-girded
hammerlock, and stocking university boards of regents with their
top corporate officers.
The result of this influence, according
to Benjamin: The average citizen or worker can't be heard over
the jangling of corporate coins. So she, often backed by Global
Exchange's $4.1 million annual budget and international Rolodex,
is their mouthpiece.
Her fearlessness has drawn the admiration
of political adversaries like former South Bay Republican Congressman
Tom Campbell, who got to know Benjamin during their Senate race.
The one where Benjamin's lasting TV image is her being hauled
away from a debate to which she wasn't invited.
Even though Campbell disagrees with Benjamin
on everything from Iraq to her disruption of Rumsfeld's Congressional
testimony, he understands her motives.
"She's very well-informed and researched
on all of her issues. I wish her views to be heard," said
Campbell, who vainly fought for Benjamin to be included in his
2000 Senate debate against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
"I wish she didn't have to resort
to theater so often. But our system only hears people who are
of the two major parties."
Others defend her omnipresence.
SEEN A LOT
"Would you say that Wal-Mart is in
too many locations or that Disney has too many characters,"
said consumer advocate Nader, a former Green Party presidential
candidate. "She has seen a lot of tragedies around the world.
You don't forget the stuff that she's seen."
It was on a trip to Washington, D.C., in
the mid-1980s that she met her now- husband Kevin Danaher, a tough-talking
activist. He asked the then-vegetarian out to dinner -- to a steak
restaurant. They've been together ever since.
"While I wanted to save the world
one child at a time, Kevin always says, 'Let's get the bastards
who are doing it to these kids.' "
Back in 1977,
when a group of idealistic journalists founded the nonprofit Center
for Investigative Reporting, muckraking was in demand.
Washington Post reporters had just helped
topple President Richard Nixon, and a new generation of journalists
signed up for the same type of endeavor.
Over the years, some academics say, the
media, controlled by a shrinking number of large corporations,
has lost some of its appetite for investigative journalism.
"It has been clear for many years
how cuts in news operations -- both newspapers and TV -- have
been limiting the depth of many newspapers and newscasts,"
Ted Pease, head of the Department of Journalism and Communication
at Utah State University, said in an e-mail.
The center certainly concurs.
"Investigative reporting is a money-loser
for journalistic corporations," said Burt Glass, executive
director of the center. "It's expensive, stories may not
pan out, and you make a lot of enemies."
But the center, based in San Francisco's
Financial District, doesn't really worry about any of those things.
As a nonprofit, it doesn't concern itself with whether a story
will make money, or enemies. It only wants its work to have an
impact.
25TH ANNIVERSARY
As the center marks its 25th anniversary,
it can see results. Congress and many states have passed legislation
directly inspired by the center's reporting.
Reporters working at the center have won
nearly every major journalism prize save the Pulitzer. (Its alumni,
including such heavyweights as Jeff Gerth of the New York Times,
have gone on to win Pulitzers.)
Its work has appeared in a variety of media
outlets, from regional newspapers like The Chronicle to national
network news shows, such as "60 Minutes," "Frontline"
and the "NBC Nightly News."
The center has exposed how toxic waste
gets shipped from the United States to the Third World; how pesticides
banned in the United States come back to this country on food
grown elsewhere; and how the illegal trade in weapons operates.
Certainly, a wide range of outstanding
investigative work appears in the mainstream media, such as the
Boston Globe's reporting on sex scandals among Catholic priests,
which kick-started a national furor. Large newspapers remain committed
to investigative work, according to Brant Houston, executive director
of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a professional association
of more than 4,000 journalists based at the University of Missouri's
journalism school.
VANISHING PRACTICE
But staff cuts -- often made in the name
of boosting profit margins -- have taken a toll on in-depth reporting.
Marilyn Greenwald and Joseph Bernt, journalism professors at Ohio
University, studied three months' worth of nine daily papers from
1980 and 1995 and found that the number of investigative reports
had been cut almost in half over that period.
Corporations have also lost the stomach
for hard-hitting reports, because of investigative projects that
backfired and led to lengthy legal battles, including notorious
cases like the Cincinnati Enquirer's expose of Chiquita Banana
Corp. and ABC News' undercover look at Food Lion supermarkets.
The economics of the center's investigation
into the weapons trade, which came out this year, illustrates
why for-profit media outlets may be reluctant to tackle ambitious
investigative projects.
The 25-minute TV program, "Gunrunners:
The Story of U.N. Sanctions, War, and Illegal Trade in Sierra
Leone" aired on the PBS series "Frontline/World,"
and the report was also featured on National Public Radio and
in the New York Times.
EXPENSIVE ENDEAVOR
But it did not come cheaply. Glass said
the cost of producing the program ran $443,310. The center --
known as CIR -- raised $175,000 in grants for the show. "Frontline"
paid $211,988. The rest -- more than $55,000 -- came out of the
center's general funds. NPR and the New York Times did not pay
anything.
"Just to insure two crews for two
trips to this area (of West Africa) cost $20,000," Glass
said.
The center employs about 12 people and
has an annual budget of about $1 million. It gets its funding
mostly from foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of
New York, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation and the Deer Creek Foundation. This year, the center
has published or broadcast about two dozen pieces, ranging from
a PBS documentary to a sidebar in the Nation.
Fans of investigative journalism say the
center performs a valuable service.
"They've done fine work over the years,"
said Houston, at Investigative Reporters and Editors. "A
lot of people have come and gone out of there who are top-notch
people. "They have an awfully good track record."
Louis Wiley, executive editor of "Frontline,"
said "The center is vital because it works not only with
public media but with commercial media as well. That's terrific.
They ought to be getting in front of as many audiences as possible."
NO STRINGS ATTACHED
The center has its origins in the desire
of some aggressive journalists to create a platform on which they
could do their work without being beholden to any one publisher.
Lowell Bergman -- later immortalized in
the movie "The Insider," in which Al Pacino played Bergman,
then a "60 Minutes" producer working on an expose of
the tobacco industry -- and David Weir were working for Rolling
Stone. Bergman was exposing organized crime. Among Weir's noteworthy
projects were behind-the- scenes reports on Patty Hearst's activities
with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
In 1977, however, Jann Wenner, founder
of Rolling Stone, moved his magazine from San Francisco to New
York and said he was changing direction. Bergman and Weir were
out of work.
"The irony of San Francisco, with
all due respect to The Chronicle and the Examiner, is there wasn't
any place where you could do in-depth reporting. Yet there were
a huge number of people wanting to do it," Bergman said.
He had been inspired by his work on a project
in Arizona. In 1976, a car bomb took the life of Don Bolles, a
reporter for the Arizona Republic who had written tough stories
about local business people and about the mob. A group of reporters
came together to continue Bolles' work after his death.
Bergman not only saw the power of reporters
teaming up, but also hooked up with Dan Noyes, a former journalist
who was leading a reporting project for a Los Angeles nonprofit,
the Urban Policy Research Institute.
Bergman, Noyes and Weir founded the center,
first in Bergman's house in Berkeley and then, with a $3,000 grant
from a small family foundation called the Stern Fund, in an office
in downtown Oakland.
FREELANCE PROJECTS
The center operated much like a freelance
journalist does, working on projects and pitching them to various
outlets. Its first big story was a critical look at how the Black
Panthers had descended into thuggish behavior. Panther leader
Huey Newton threatened a lawsuit, but never filed it. (Glass said
the center has never been sued for a story, which he called a
testament to the accuracy of its reporting.)
Money was always tight. "We thought:
The money might run out, but at least we'll get a few projects
off the ground," said Noyes, who is CIR's editorial director.
"We had no idea we'd be around for 25 years."
By early 1981, "we weren't sure we
were going to make it," Noyes said. But Bob Maynard, editor
of the Oakland Tribune, helped arrange a $5,000 grant from the
Gannett Foundation, and CIR produced "Circle of Poison,"
a probe into how goods banned in the United States get exported
around the world.
"Circle of Poison" became a book
and was the lead story on the "NBC Nightly News." Legislation
to regulate the export of hazardous chemicals was proposed - -
but not passed -- in Congress. CIR was on the map. " 'Circle
of Poison' helped make foundations and people in the media see
how important the work we were doing was," Noyes said. "That
helped us get through the early '80s."
CIR's founders believe that society's demand
for their type of work comes in periodic waves.
The founders hope that now, as in the era
of Vietnam and Watergate, muckraking is once again in demand.
"It's a very good time for investigative
reporting," said Weir, a veteran of Rolling Stone, Mother
Jones, Wired, Salon.com and the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner,
and now a journalism teacher at Stanford University. "We
have corporate corruption, the buildup to war, and the threat
to our civil liberties. . . .
"When people in America are saying
things are not quite right, and they're looking for change, that's
a good time for investigative reporting to look for answers."
We call on women around the world to rise
up and oppose the war in Iraq. We call on mothers, grandmothers,
sisters and daughters, on workers, students, teachers, healers,
artists, writers, singers, poets, and every ordinary outraged
woman willing to be outrageous for peace.
Women have been the guardians of life-not
because we are better or purer or more innately nurturing than
men, but because the men have busied themselves making war. Because
of our responsibility to the next generation, because of our own
love for our families and communities and this country that we
are a part of, we understand the love of a mother in Iraq for
her children, and the driving desire of that child for life.
Our leaders tell us we that we can easily
afford hundreds of billions of dollars for this war. But in the
United States of America, many of our elders who have worked hard
all their lives now must choose whether to buy their prescription
drugs, or food. Our children's education is eroded. The air they
breathe and the water they drink are polluted. Vast numbers of
women and children live in poverty.
If we cannot afford health care, quality
education and quality of life, how can we afford to squander our
resources in attacking a country that is no proven immediate threat
to us? We face real threats every day: the illness or ordinary
accident that could plunge us into poverty, the violence on our
own streets, the corporate corruption that can result in the loss
of our jobs, our pensions, and our security.
In Iraq today, a child with cancer cannot
get pain relief or medication because of sanctions. Childhood
diarrhea has again become a major killer. 500,000 children have
already died from inadequate health care, water and food supplies
due to sanctions. How many more will die if bombs fall on Baghdad,
or a ground war begins?
We cannot morally consent to war while
paths of peace and negotiation have not been pursued to their
fullest. We who cherish children will not consent to their murder.
Nor do we consent to the murder of their mothers, grandmothers,
fathers, grandfathers, or to the deaths of our own sons and daughters
in a war for oil.
We love our country, but we will never
wrap ourselves in red, white and blue. Instead, we announce a
Code Pink alert: signifying extreme danger to all the values of
nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving men have
held. We choose pink, the color of roses, the beauty that like
bread is food for life, the color of the dawn of a new era when
cooperation and negotiation prevail over force.
We call on all outraged women to join us
in taking a stand, now. And we call upon our brothers to join
with us and support us. These actions will be initiated by women,
but not limited to women. Stand in the streets and marketplaces
of your towns with banners and signs of dissent, and talk to your
neighbors. Stand before your elected representatives: and if they
will not listen, sit in their offices, refusing to leave until
they do. Withdraw consent from the warmongers. Engage in outrageous
acts of dissent. We encourage all actions, from public education
and free speech to nonviolent civil disobedience that can disrupt
the progress toward war.
