I've been representing Texas NOW on the steering committee for Women's Legislative Days for the last several months, and I'm thrilled to report that the day is finally here! We kick off with a welcome reception tonight, and then the cool stuff really starts. Tomorrow will be a full day of workshops on everything from global warming to violence against women, with panels of the smartest folks we could find. We'll get you all educated on the issues, and then Tuesday we head to the Capitol to make our voices heard.

I'm especially excited to report that our keynote speakers are the fabulous Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, the bestselling authors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism. They are great young feminist leaders and I hear they're fantastic speakers as well, so don't miss them!

We worked really hard to keep this conference accessible to everyone, so the fee is only $35 and it's FREE for students! The only thing students have to pay for is lunch if they want it, but you can bring your own. We still have a few more spots open, so come on down if you can. See you there!

So we're grumpy that our, uh, distinguished colleagues at the Capitol are pushing for a trigger law that would outlaw abortion in Texas if Roe v. Wade is overturned. It's ridiculous. The vast majority of Texans are pro-choice. Seriously. A 2004 Scripps Howard Texas Poll found that 81% of Texans agree with the statement, �??Abortion is a complex issue that is better left in the hands of a woman, her doctor, her family, and her God, rather than in the hands of politicians.�?�

Eighty-one percent! You read that right. Do you know how hard it is to get 81% of people to agree on anything? That is a HUGE number. And it tells us quite clearly that the people of Texas don't want this. A very vocal minority has no right to make decisions for the rest of us.

Get ready to contact your legislators, folks. We've got to make our voices heard this year.

• For the first time in US history, the House clerk will be saying, "Madam Speaker." Congratulations, Rep. Pelosi!
• NARAL Pro-Choice America tells us that we have three new pro-choice US Senators and more than twenty new pro-choice US Representatives!
• Democratic control of the Senate will help us take back the federal courts, vital to maintaining reproductive rights at the state level.
• Voters in South Dakota defeated an abortion ban! Voters in Oregon and California also defeated anti-choice ballot measures.

Here in Texas...

• We have five new pro-woman state representatives! Congrats to Valinda Bolton, Ellen Cohen, Juan Garcia, Paula Hightower Pierson, and Allen Vaught. Counting the delightful Rep. Donna Howard, who won her seat in a special election in the spring, we have six new pro-woman voices at the Capitol!
• Notice that four of the above six are women. Cohen defeated anti-feminist Martha Wong, so we have a net gain of three women in the Texas Legislature, for a total of 40. That gets us up to 22% female representation. Not great in total, but a great step forward.
• We re-elected pro-woman Reps. Mark Strama and Hubert Vo and Senator Jeff Wentworth.

That's a good day for women, y'all. I'm feeling good and looking forward to making some progress come the spring and the legislative session!

I'm also looking forward to having more time to sleep - and to post to this blog.

Texas is not the most progressive state on voting rights. We have an awful history of discrimination against people of color. You have to register weeks before Election Day. First-time voters have to show ID. Etc, etc.

But we're getting better. And there are a few things we do right. Voting rights are restored to felons who've paid their debt to society. Seniors, the disabled, those who are in jail but are still eligible to vote, and people who will be out of the country can vote by mail.

And my favorite by far is Early Voting. Voting should be as easy as possible, and EV is all about making it easy. For nearly two weeks leading up to Election Day, including a Saturday and a Sunday, you can vote at your local grocery store, the mall, or the library - places you go in your daily life. I think this is great in large part because it's really respectful of working people and busy parents for whom business hours on Tuesday are just not feasible. Love it.

Early Voting starts this Monday, October 23, and extends till the following Friday, November 3. So you've got no excuse. Check out your local candidates, and then get thee to a polling place!

Info for...
* Austin and Travis County
* Dallas County
* El Paso
* Fort Worth and Tarrant County
* Houston and Harris County
* San Antonio and Bexar County

In its 1972 debut issue, Ms. magazine ran a bold petition in which 53 well-known U.S. women declared that they had undergone abortions�??despite state laws rendering the procedure illegal...

Even then, to many it seemed absurd that the government could deny a woman sovereignty over her own body. It is even more absurd in 2006 to learn that an abortion ban has passed into law in South Dakota. The South Dakota ban has been stayed because an initiative to remove this ban has been placed on the state�??s November ballot. Whatever happens in South Dakota, 17 states now have trigger laws or pre-Roe bans that will ban abortion if the Supreme Court were to reverse Roe v. Wade. A myriad of restrictions already limit access to abortion in the U.S. for poor women, young women, and women in the military. We know it is time again for women of conscience to stand up and speak truth to power.

At the time of the original Ms. petition, illegal abortions were causing untold suffering in the United States, especially for poor women who had to resort to unsafe self-induced or back-alley abortions. Today, in the developing nations each year, approximately 70,000 women and girls die from botched and unsafe abortions and another 500,000 maternal deaths occur�??most of this suffering and loss could be prevented. U.S. international family planning policies contribute to this death toll: first, by conditioning its aid on a global gag rule that prevents medical workers from giving even information on abortion; second, by withholding or providing inadequate funds; and finally, by funding abstinence-only education.

We are now starting a new petition, beginning with the names of some of the original 1972 signers...It is time to speak out again�?? in even larger numbers �?? and to make politicians face their neighbors, influential movers and shakers, and yes, their family members. We cannot, must not �?? for U.S. women and the women of the world �?? lose the right to safe, legal, and accessible abortion or access to birth control.

They get an amen from me. And hey, make a contribution if you can, please. The women at Ms. and The Feminist Majority Foundation fight hard to safeguard our reproductive rights. They track anti-choice violence against family planning clinics and abortion providers. They keep us informed about anti-choice laws at the state level. They lobby Congress. They collected thousands of signatures to pressure the FDA to make EC available over the counter. They'll put your cash to good use, working for your right to choose.

Emma founded two chapters of the International Ladies' Garment Workers. And in 1938, when she was just 21, she organized more than 10,000 pecan shellers, many of whom were women or children, to strike against their employers. It's odd to think about it now, but pecan shelling used to be one of San Antonio's major industries. So at that time, organized resistance against it was incredibly radical and a big change. This was also, according to historian Don Carleton, the first successful action in the Mexican-American social justice movement. The strike lasted a month and won higher wages for the shellers.

Needless to say, Emma was a very controversial figure. She was a lightning rod for conservative critics and a ray of hope for poor folks and Latino/as. She was jailed many times for her Communist beliefs and her involvement in protests and strikes. The tension culminated in what many have called the worst riot in San Antonio history. Emma was speaking to a crowd of Communists and labor activists at Municipal Auditorium when a mob of 5,000 people descended on the facility and began throwing bricks and stones. Chaos ensued. Emma received death threats and was blacklisted and unable to find employment - all this because she argued for things like Social Security, unemployment benefits, and the right to unionize, which we take for granted today.

After the dust settled, she left for California, where she earned her teacher's certification. She returned to San Antonio in the late 1960s, eventually obtaining a master's in education from Our Lady of the Lake University. She spent the remainder of her life teaching migrant children and continuing to inspire young activists until her death in 1999. Still beloved, she was known in the community as La Pasionaria de Tejas. As Carmen Tafolla said in her eulogy, "... She was our heart, defendiendo de los pobres [defending the poor], speaking out at a time when neither Mexicans nor women were expected to speak at all."

For more info:

• the Texan Cultures Institute's oral history interview with Tenayuca
• her bio at La Voz de Aztlan

Anyway...

Frances "Sissy" Farenthold, a Texas native, received her bachelor's degree from Vassar College, then a JD from the University of Texas Law School. In a student body of 800, she was one of only three women. After graduation, she worked as a field lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union from 1965 to 1967. She also served as the Nueces County legal aid director. Her work in both of these roles exposed her to a world of poverty and injustice that she had never known. Farenthold turned to politics.

She ran in several political races in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1968, she won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives representing Corpus Christi. She and Barbara Jordan were the only two women serving in the Legislature at the time. Farenthold was one of the so-called Dirty Thirty - the thirty House members who rebelled against a corrupt Speaker back in the early '70s. In fact, she sponsored a resolution calling for an internal investigation into the Speaker's shady financial dealings. Brave lady!

She was part of the organizing conference for the Texas Women's Political Caucus. In 1972, six women were elected to the Legislature, and the TWPC endorsed Farenthold as a gubernatorial candidate. Sissy lost, but TWPC remained active in politics and in 1973 hosted the first convention of the National Women's Political Caucus. At that meeting, Farenthold was elected chair of the national caucus.

Farenthold was also active in national politics. She served as a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami and was nominated for Vice President of the United States. This was the first time a woman had ever been nominated and voted on for the position. She came in second, but her nomination proved that women were contenders for the top spots on the ticket.

Snark of the day: Operation Rescue has lost its tax-exempt status because of illegal political activities during the 2004 election cycle. Let me just take a moment to smirk with glee about that.

Cool event of the day: Gloria Steinem will be speaking in San Antonio next Thursday at the 25th anniversary of San Antonio College's Women's Center. Happy anniversary, y'all! Gloria is a wonderful speaker and such an inspiring woman. If you're in SA, don't miss it!

Richards is the only woman governor of Texas to be elected in her own right; Ma Ferguson was elected only after her husband got booted out. Richards was the source of so many firsts: the first African-American on the UT Board of Regents, the first African-American and female Texas Rangers (the law enforcement, not the baseball team), the first disabled member of the human services commission. She herself was the first woman to be elected to statewide office in more than fifty years.

We've lost an amazing woman, a bright star in our political galaxy, a sharp wit and a big heart crowned by that fabulous Texas-sized hair. Our thoughts are with her family. Raise a glass of cold iced tea in her honor, folks, and remember her fighting spirit, her deep compassion, and her sense of fun.

We'll miss you, Ann Richards. Godspeed.

I give props to the League of Women Voters Arlington chapter and Dallas chapter for getting started studying the problem, but the rest of y'all... what the hell is up? 33% of you say you'd vote if you had more information. Is that just laziness, or do I sense a whiff of girly low self-esteem there? I'd rather it's the latter, because that I can address more easily. Listen up, ladies: go find the information. I know we're all busy and everything, but take twenty minutes and find this stuff out. It's important. The League of Women Voters does a fantastic candidate questionnaire every cycle which includes scads of useful info and usually appears in your local paper and on your local chapter's website. Go to the candidate's websites. If you trust your local newspaper, check out their endorsements. You don't have to find out everything in the world about the candidates. Check their issues positions and experience, and then make your decisions. Not so hard, right?

Then put your big-girl underwear on and get your butts to the polls. Can't make it on Election Day? Contact your local elections board about early voting or voting by mail. Scrawl your mail ballot in crayon if you have to, but vote. Women's issues only get attention when we show them how much power we have. Use that power. You know the one I mean. The right to vote, the right that so many people suffered, fought, even died for. Honor their struggle by exercising your right. VOTE.

It was also the birthday of someone you might not know - Liz Carpenter. Liz is often seen at political events around Austin, and she's fabulous. Can't quite place her? Here are some of her firsts:

• First woman to be vice president of UT Austin's Student Government
• First woman executive assistant to the Vice President
• First professional newswoman to be press secretary for a first lady

A sixth-generation Texan born in Salado, Liz's energy and wit have taken her fascinating places. She covered the Roosevelt White House for the Austin American-Statesman, including covering Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. She was a speechwriter for LBJ, most famously crafting his speech to the nation after President Kennedy was assassinated. She was press secretary and chief of staff to Lady Bird Johnson. She and her husband founded a public relations firm in Washington, D.C. President Ford named her to the International Women's Year Commission. She's a founding member of the Texas Women's Political Caucus and campaigned tirelessly for the Equal Rights Amendment. She was assistant secretary of education in the Carter Administration. She returned to Texas in 1976 and has been writing, speaking, and helping out younger folks in progressive politics ever since.

I'm tired just thinking about it, aren't you? What a dynamo.

And that's not all. She's a cancer survivor who's raised piles of money to fight the disease. She's still a very sought-after speaker, and she's written countless magazine articles and several books, including Ruffles and Flourishes, about her time in the White House; Getting Better All the Time, about her life before Washington; Unplanned Parenthood, about raising the three children of her brother, who died when they were 16, 14, and 11; and Start With a Laugh, a guide to writing good speeches.

Miss Liz has received every award and accolade under the sun. She's in the Texas Women's Hall of Fame, and received a 1977 Woman of the Year award from Ladies Home Journal, Distinguished Alumnus awards from UT Austin and from its College of Communications, the ProBene Award from UT's College of Liberal Arts, and the Frances Willard Award fromAlpha Phi. Her friends put together the Liz Sutherland Carpenter Distinguished Visiting Lectureship at UT, which has brought incredible speakers, including President Clinton, Betty Friedan, Fannie Flagg, Bill Moyers, and Maya Angelou, to campus. She is a true Texas treasure. Happy birthday, Miss Liz!

For more info:

• a day in the life of Miss Liz from the Austin Chronicle
• her bio and interviews with Evan Smith on KLRU

• Exploring the Texas State Library's excellent online exhibit, Votes for Women
• Signing NOW's petition demanding that anybody who wants to lead our nation stand up for the rights of slightly more than 50 percent of its citizens

And if you're not registered to vote, get that way! Our suffragist foremothers fought hard for these rights, ladies. Don't let them down. You can register at any driver's license office. In Texas you have to be registered to vote 30 days prior to any election to be eligible to vote in that election, so if you want to vote in November, get registered now!

Austin: check with the Travis County Tax Office
Dallas: go to Dallas County Elections
Fort Worth: check with Tarrant County Elections
El Paso: go to El Paso Counts
Houston: they'll take care of you at the Harris County Tax Office
San Antonio: Bexar County Elections Department will set you up
Elsewhere around the state: check with the Secretary of State's Office or your county tax office

See you at the polls, women!

She married Elbert Adair in 1918, and they moved to Kingsville. There she opened a Sunday school, and also began her community activism. She joined a multiracial group opposed to gambling, and then became involved in the suffrage movement. At that time neither blacks nor women could vote, and anyone who knows her feminist history knows that there was some racism in the suffrage movement. Indeed, after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, blacks were still turned away from the polls because of racist whites' tactic to deter them: the white primary. Since the South was wholly Democratic at that point, the primary basically decided the election. Thus excluding African-Americans from the primary effectively disenfranchised them. Adair had this to say:

"Back in 1918 Negroes could not vote and women could not vote either. The white women were trying to help get a bill passed in the legislature where women could vote. I said to the Negro women, "I don't know if we can use it now or not, but if there's a chance, I want to say we helped make it.

"We went to the polls at the white primary but could not vote...We kept after them until they finally said 'You cannot vote because you are a Negro.'"

This was a smart strategy, because that gave them grounds to sue. And sue they did. The Adairs had moved to Houston in 1925, and Christia had become very active in the Houston chapter of the NAACP. As executive secretary, she was a driving force behind the landmark lawsuit, Smith v. Allwright, which overturned the white primary - and helped set the stage for Brown v. Board of Education.

Bunches of us are headed back to school soon, or are already back. For many of us, education cut both ways. We learned how to do algebra, but maybe we also got told it wasn't feminine to learn calculus. We learned about Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR, but maybe not about Abigail Adams, Jane Addams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Eleanor Roosevelt. And we learned even less about women of color. We might have learned about Pocahantas and Rosa Parks, but almost certainly not about Sojourner Truth, Emma Tenayuca, Dolores Huerta, or Grace Lee Boggs. If we did learn about women, it was probably in one of those little text boxes set off to the side - women are often literally marginalized in textbooks.

If you're feeling pushed to the side, here's some fun for you:

What to read for book reports:
Amelia Bloomer Project 2006

Where to get sassy feminist shirts, totes, and buttons:
* NOW's online store
* Syracuse Cultural Workers
* Feminist Majority online store

And a little remedial education: for anyone who's ever expressed sentiments similar to, "I'm not a feminist, but..." (like Drew Barrymore, Kate Hudson, and Nelly Furtado), below the fold is a brief feminist FAQ.

Annette came back to Houston in 1903. She and her sisters, Elizabeth and Katherine, worked together to form suffrage leagues in Houston and Galveston - the first such organizations in the state. They also started the statewide organization, the State Woman Suffrage League; Annette served as president. The family business took them back to New York, and without their energetic organizing, the suffrage organizations lapsed into relative inactivity. But when Finnigan's father died four years later and she took over the business, she began dividing her time between New York City and Houston. When she was in Texas, she was organizing.

Finnigan revived the Houston suffrage league and with her sisters helped organize a 1913 suffrage march. From 1914-1916 she shared the presidency of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association with Mary Eleanor Brackenridge. They pushed for a statewide referendum on a constitutional amendment which would grant suffrage to women. She moved to Austin to lobby for the amendment. It passed the House, but not the Senate. Though the push for the amendment was not successful, it greatly increased the profile of the cause of women's right to vote and put state officials on notice that this issue was not going away. The suffrage bill passed three years later.

In 1916, after contracting a serious illness involving paralysis, Finnigan was forced to adopt a less strenuous lifestyle. She gave up her business and political activities and focused more on her interests in world travel and in collecting art, rare books, and antiques. She spent most of the year in New York City, but wintered in Houston, which she always considered her home. She gave generously to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Houston Public Library, consulting with curators and doing extensive research before traveling abroad to acquire artifacts. One of her last gifts to the City of Houston was an 18-acre plot of land in the Fifth Ward for a "Negro park." This gift was a symbol of her support of African-American rights - note that it was made during the oppressive Jim Crow period.

Finnigan was diagnosed with cancer in 1940 and died soon after. She was buried in Houston's Glenwood Cemetary.

For more info:

• her bio at HoustonHistory.com
• her entry at the Handbook of Texas Online

Prof. Ritter has written a book called The Constitution as Social Design: Gender and Civic Membership in the American Constitutional Order, in which she argues that US women's struggles to achieve equality are rooted in our Constitution - both inspired and constrained by our founding document. She's currently featured on UT's website, where there's a a nice article on the book:

While the culture of modern-day America may have moved beyond the days when suffragist Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in a presidential election, Ritter maintains these struggles are not so far removed from those of Anthony�??s. How the Constitution is interpreted has enormous power over what roles citizens inhabit in political and social communities.

�??How do we understand women as part of our political community?�?� Ritter asks. �??What does equality mean? Does it mean treating you as an autonomous individual, or in the case of an issue such as family medical leave, does equality mean recognizing that you have responsibilities to care for dependents who impact your ability to pursue different kinds of economic opportunities?�?�

Ritter hopes equality can mean both.

�??The issue is not, how can we treat everyone exactly the same, no matter who they are, but rather, how can we increase opportunities for everyone to participate fully in public life, wherever they�??re starting from?"

Isn't she cool, folks? I love how she draws such a clear distinction between equivalence and equality in that last sentence. The book is an academic tome, so not light reading; but Ritter's a fine writer, so for a nerd like me, this totally qualifies as summer reading. Come on, geek out with me!

A thousand blessings on these fine folks for the hours of late-summer entertainment they have brought us.

Eleanor became active in many women's organizations, including the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She re-organized the San Antonio chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and founded the Women's Club of San Antonio, where she served as president for seven years. Under her leadership the club worked to promote better education and employment opportunities for women, as well as the general welfare of women and children. During this period she also studied Texas law, and in 1911 she published a pamphlet, The Legal Status of Texas Women.

She was the first president of the San Antonio Equal Franchise Society. In April 1913, delegates from around the state met in San Antonio and elected her president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association. She served one term, shared leadership with Annette Finnegan for a time, and then stepped aside. She continued to give her time and money to the cause. When the Texas Legislature granted women suffrage, she was the first woman in Bexar County to register to vote.

As if all that weren't enough, she was also a seasoned world traveler and an active participant in her family's business interests. She was one of the first women in the nation to serve as a bank director, holding positions on the boards of directors of the San Antonio National Bank and the San Antonio Loan and Trust Company.

Education for women was a lifelong passion. Eleanor was one of the founders of Texas Woman's University. She fought for its funding, often provided financial assistance to students in need, and even provided a cottage that served as an early dorm. She was Vice Chair of the Board of Regents for 22 years, from its inception in 1902 to her death in 1924. She also influenced her brother, George, "the guardian angel of UT," to promote equality for women. He did so with his considerable influence as well as his money; he provided countless scholarships for women and donated the money to build a women's dorm at the medical school in Galveston. In recognition of her contributions to the state, about a jillion things are named after her, including a dorm at TWU and a park and school in San Antonio.

For more information:

• her bio at Handbook of Texas Online

Wajiha al-Huweidar, an outspoken writer, said she was taken in by police for carrying a placard urging King Abdullah to grant more rights to women...

Huweidar, 45, said she protested on a busy causeway leading to neighbouring Bahrain, where women enjoy greater rights.

"A year after his (King Abdullah's) enthronement and after promising us more rights, the picture on women's rights remains very opaque," Huweidar told Reuters by telephone. "I'm not alone in this, a lot of women in the country aspire for more rights.

"Police treatment was faultless, they interrogated me and asked for a male (relative) ... to sign a pledge that I will not do such a thing again, my brother came and signed it for me.

"I won't march again on the bridge as I promised, but there are other ways to protest."

Wow. I am in awe. That is one hardcore feminist sister. Imagine staging a march all by yourself with your little sign, in a country where public protest is illegal, where you've got to have your brother come promise you'll behave - and after they let you out of jail, immediately starting to figure out more ways to make yourself heard within the law. Now that's perseverance.

You're not alone, Ms. al-Huweidar. I know your fellow Saudi feminists are proud of you and glad to see you standing strong for them. And I promise I'm cheering as hard as I can from here.

NO! That's not ironic. It would be ironic if Plan B was an abortifacient. But it's not. Plan B is a form of emergency contraception - the so-called "morning after" pills. Plan B actually prevents abortion abortion because it gives women one more option if their regular birth control method fails, if they forget to use it, or if they are sexually assaulted. So if Senator Allen is such an all-out wingnut that he's against contraception, then he should dump his Barr stock. But if what he's against is abortion, then he should buy more.

Why am I so grouchy at Bluebonnet as well as the editorial peeps at the News Virginian about this? Because I hate it when misinformation about EC is perpetuated. The Folks Out There have a hard time differentiating EC from RU-486 (the 'abortion pill'). They're not the same thing. Even the government says so. EC is basically backup birth control. If you're already pregnant and you take EC, it won't do anything. RU-486 causes a medical abortion. If you're pregnant and you take RU-486, it will terminate the pregnancy. Since we're so freaky about abortion in this country, it's crucial to make sure people understand the difference.

And the timing couldn't be worse. There have been years of controversy and jackass behavior on the part of right-wing Bush adminstration officials on the issue of over-the-counter access to EC. One of them opined that making EC more widely available would lead to massive promiscuity and teenagers forming sex-based cults around its use. I'm not kidding. Resignations were tendered. Nominations were held up. Some crazy stuff went down. Now that we've finally gotten the FDA to reconsider making EC available over the counter, the last thing we need is more misinformation.

If you want to get a joke out of this mess without Alanis references, it's not hard to do. Here's a little comedy gift from me to you: the name of the FDA official who made the insane statements about sex cults is... Janet Woodcock. Y'all have fun with that.