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She Should Run

Submitted by JanieBelle on 21 September 2007 - 5:23am.

Last night at my blog UDreamOfJanie I got this comment, from Joey Appley-Epstein:

Hi Janie Belle,
My name is Joey Appley-Epstein, and I’m writing to you on behalf of a project by the Women’s Campaign Forum called “She Should Run.” The goal of the project is to encourage both women and men to nominate inspiring pro-choice women to run for office — in every type of election from school boards to the United States Senate. So far, the project has collected 800 nominations and because of the positive feedback and response, we’ve decided to make a final push to 1,000 total nominations.

For this final push, we have decided to reach out to online communities for their help. The project focuses on the encouragement, empowerment, and election of pro-choice women. As you yourself are pro-choice I thought you might be interested in taking action for this movement. To reach our goal of 1,000, it certainly is going to be a community effort and we would really appreciate your help in discussing this special project before it concludes.

The greatest part of this project is that it’s the real thing, too, and not a superficial exercise by any stretch of the imagination. As the nominations have come in, the WCF has been following up to make sure these women receive the support and resources they need to run. They’re even planning their first training session with women who have been encouraged to run as a direct result of this project.

With that, here are some resources on the project:
1) The She Should Run website: http://www.sheshouldrun.org
2) A video overview of the She Should Run project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG55HNFmoNY
3) A great video by Congresswoman/Fellow Mom Debbie Wasserman Schultz on She Should Run, encouragement, and running for office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk7NVr2RcIQ

Obviously, this isn’t a one-sided e-mail. As this project is all about participation, please send me any comments or questions that you have, and I’ll be sure to get them answered as soon as possible.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.
- Joey

Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention, Joey. I'll be passing the word around, and there are several pro-choice women that I think would be outstanding in office. (Elizabeth Wood, I'm looking right at YOU.)


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JanieBelle

Dream a little dream of me.

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Who, me?

Submitted by Elizabeth on 21 September 2007 - 8:00am.

JanieBelle, thanks for posting the info on She Should Run. When I talk with my students about why there are so few women in politics at the national level (the House and Senate for example where women make up only about 14% of the representatives even though we constitute slightly over 50% of the population) they always assume overt discrimination until I ask them how many of them would consider running for office and suddenly they notice that aspiration to politcal office is just not as common among women as among men. Or at least it seems that way by their show of hands. Then we start talking about why that might be and we begin uncovering all the "but I want to have a family" kinds of reasons that so often keep women from doing things that men (with families) do because they have wives who help take care of the family work. (It does seem rare that a male politician is unmarried, doesn't it?) 

I think She Should Run needs a sister organization called Her Political Partner. Women and men could form family-like support networks for those women who do want to run for office. 

And please stop looking at me like that ;) But, I am planning to run for a leadership position in my union. And we need strong, equality-minded progressive leaders in all kinds of organizations.


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Elizabeth

BS.....

Submitted by Chris on 27 September 2007 - 12:41am.
I'm not buying it. All I see here is a ploy to sell old wine in new bottles. Of course, in an ideal world, we would have a Congress that looked more like the country. But I consider that secondary to getting a Congress that genuinely speaks for the country. If the best we can do in the name of feminism and empowering women politically is to get more hacks like Hillary or Feinstein or Boxer into office, then to hell with it. This ad is emblematic of a very deep, serious problem with the left right now: too many lefties are looking for someone who will save us, rather than learning to save ourselves. We're convinced that if we can just get the right person in the White House, or in the Senate, we can wake up from the long nightmare of the last 25 years and let them take care of it. I voted for Nader in 2000, and still won't apologize for it, but I still think that the energy that progressives put into pushing his campaign was a misapplication of resources. Far more important, I think, for the Greens and the few liberals still in the Democratic Party to fight small, local battles, and win city councils, mayoral races, a few governorships -- and even more importantly, to make sure that the people who support a return to liberalism know that they're not alone. Having women in office doesn't guarantee that women's voices will be heard. Hillary, who's zigged and zagged about abortion is evidence of that. So is Condi Rice. This sounds like an attempt to build a movement from the top down, and we need to build it from the bottom up.
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