It is Women’s History month. Women need to stand up and ROAR!
It is Women’s History month. Women need to stand up and ROAR! We need to ponder deeply and inwardly on how we can set a course for our future and the future of the next seven generations. Women and girls must be at the center of every discussion and decision to build healthier, safer, fair and just policies, economies and communities. I have a lot to say in this post. The bottom line is that we have a great deal of work to do.
A Proclamation on Women’s History Month, 2024
Let’s start with, “What do we need to wake up to and let go of?” This is a time of ending our attachments to what no longer serves us. Do we understand how our choices impact the global supply chain? Do we stand up stand up for fair and safe working environments for all and each other? Do we use our dollars to support fair and sustainable and environmentally conscious business practices? What do we tolerate in the workplace that can be changed?
Our economy of dislocation, insecurity and inequality is no longer workable. Corporations are raking in record profits. Economic systems that are contrived should help people to prosper and thrive. However, the wealth gap has scandalously increased. The middle class as all but disappeared. Women, people of color and LGBTQ, and those on the lower wage scales are frequently left behind.
Living here in a rural community, times are hard and were hard before COVID. Much of the land here, as elsewhere, is locked up in ownership titles, owned by LLC’s, corporate and speculative interests. Rents are high everywhere.
The winds and storms of March brings us into Women’s History Month. What better time to look at examples of women throwing off old ideas and bondage. Their endurance and courage is beyond inspiring. Women entering the workforce was once banned. Women pushed back against this with their free-thinking male allies. The freedom for women to choose one’s own future, earn wages, and own businesses was at a great cost. That freedom is under attack.
The beliefs that are being spouted across the political and so-called religious spectrum are being employed to hold us back and need to be pushed back against and questioned again and again.
Climate change, racism, misogyny, homophobia, war, women’s rights to control their destinies and own bodies, gender identity are all being used as political wedges to keep us divided.
Our minds can envision a new solid future where our present world crises can be overcome. War is obsolete. Racism, misogyny, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia, is obsolete. I wish that guns and weapons were obsolete. I wish that greed, fascism and political manipulation gives way to our recognizing the value of engaging with each other meaningfully and not as adversaries. We have the expertise in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences and at the grass roots to work together to achieve shared goals and not simply to spur profit or prestige for the few.
Discipline and perseverance with compassion and working together can be our roadmap and help us through these crazy times.
We are spiritual beings. Not to be confused with religion. Religions in my view have failed humanity. That is another conversation. The human spirit and soul does not thrive on narrow-minded blinders of fear and anger and conspiracy theories.
Our political space has become a harbor for division and divisive conflict. We are heading daily into the unknown. Let’s break through the political ideologies of ultra-nationalist and authoritarian dogmas and tendencies. It is needed at the local level and all the way up!
It is time to patiently reflect on this – and to rise above the antagonism turmoil and madness that does not serve anyone. It is time to gather in cooperative fellowship and stand up together – not as individuals with self-serving interests or groups pitted against each other.
I want to raise up Lilian Ngoyi.
In December 1956, Lilian Ngoyi (1911-1980) became national president of both the Federation of South African Women and the African National Congress Women’s League, became the first woman ever to be elected to the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC). Ngoyi was born in Pretoria, into poverty and worked in the garment trade industry,
Ngoyi joined the ANC Defiance Campaign during the 1950’s and was arrested for using facilities in a post office that were reserved for white people. She led protests against the pass laws on behalf of the 20,000 women from across South Africa She was jailed, spent time in solitary confinement. She struggled to earn a living with the attempts to silence and isolate her. The sanctioned institutionalized system of racial segregation, ended in the 1990s thanks to decades of activism. The elimination of racial discrimination Apartheid led to South Africa becoming a democratic government in 1994. In 2014 the City of Johannesburg honored Lilian Ngoyi and renamed Bree Street in Johannesburg Lilian Ngoyi Street.
Read more about this courageous woman at the Women’s History Network.
https://womenshistorynetwork.org/black-history-month-lilian-masediba-ngoyi-1911-1980/
Articles to ponder:
The flipside of American progress: economic failure or failed economics?
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/economic-failure-or-failed-economics
The history of women’s work and wages and how it has created success for us all
Policies for states and localities to fight oppressive child labor
https://www.epi.org/publication/fight-oppressive-child-labor/