Diary of an Activist, What keeps me going

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activist, amanda reaume, CCCABC, Diary of an Activist, don't give up, donations, feminism, feminist, reaume, support, women

I have always believed that the world has a magical and mysterious way of ensuring that you have the tools and the people you need at the right times in your life. I am sure you know what I mean?  Perhaps you have also been on the verge of giving up when someone suddenly came into your life and boosted your confidence and your energy? Or perhaps when you were supposed to give up on something – things just didn’t work out and you found your energies redirected towards somewhere that was ultimately more productive? I find this has happened a number of times in my life.

As an activist and the Executive Director of a non-profit, the one thing that has kept me going is the support of others. Whether they are family, friends, colleagues, or complete strangers, I have more stories than I can tell of times when people have stepped in and helped me and Antigone out of a tough spot, or donated money, or donated their time or work, or just complimented my work and the work of the organization. Creating something from nothing, manifesting an organization, a magazine, a book or a set of programs from nothing or nowhere is hard and scary work.

Feminists Who Totally Rock 4: Crystal Gartside

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Crystal Gartside, Feminists Who Totally Rock

This week’s Feminist Who Totally Rocks is Crystal Gartside. Crystal works a policy analyst for the Manitoba Women’s Advisory Council. The Manitoba Women’s Advisory Council, “works within the Manitoba Status of Women Division to represent the issues and concerns of Manitoba women. The council focuses on issues that have a social, legal or economic impact on the lives of women and their families”. Crystal has been working hard towards an inclusive environment wherein women from all walks of life are made a priority in policy formation.

1.What was it that inspired you to become a feminist?

I had always had a strong emotional reaction to injustice and inequality. My family and our histories opened me to the oppression and marginalization of women and Indigenous people, but also affirmed my strength and ability to make a difference. When I went to university and discovered feminism through women’s studies courses, I felt an instant affinity; here was a way to really understand injustice – how it works, who benefits and how to make change! It was a framework for understanding all kinds of oppression – gendered, colonial, class – that worked for me, gave me a path to walk, and a way to funnel my strong emotional reactions into something useful, while working with others who felt the same way.

The Preliminary UNCSW 54 Post-Mortem

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Commission on the Status of Women, United Nations

This is the final part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9
I will probably write more than just one post-mortem on the 54th Commission of the Status of Women for me. I’m writing while staying up too late in Calgary, waiting impatiently to be home with my kids, and have stayed up to that point that I’m scared that if I go to sleep that I will miss my plane.

I didn’t actually get to see Senator Clinton. I had referred to her in my tweets, facebook and blog as “Hillary” and some other tweeple sent out a message to people blogging and tweeting the CSW asking that we refer to the Senator by her proper title. The Feminist communication on this is that when people refer to male politicians they do so by either the proper title and last name, or simply last name.

I suppose referring to a public or professional official by their first name kind of implies a familiarity that isn’t seen as respectful as the title-last-name thing. I’m not that picky about much. I usually refer to people by name because I’m never totally sure of their proper titles (unless it’s an easy one like “president” or “minister”) and I’m usually too lazy to google.

All of that, however, is secondary to the fact that I didn’t actually get to see her address the United Nations on the last day of the CSW. I did wait for over two hours in a line where I was shouted at by UN security personnel. I started livetweeting that after one of the security guards yelled viciously at a woman who looked over seventy. She had approached the guard because she wasn’t sure which line she should have been in.

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do” – Dreams for Women Week 37

What are your dreams for women?
Antigone Magazine
C/O WILLA
Box 61 – 6138 SUB Blvd
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z1
OR antigonemagazine(at)hotmail.com

Some Leaders are Born Women, Generosity Edition

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angela merke, book proposal, book publishing, canada, Council of women world leaders, cristina fernandez de kirchner, ellen johnson-sirleaf, feminist, han myung sook, helen clark, jadranka kosor, johanna sigurdardottir, kids can press, kim campbell, l book, luisa dias diogo, margaret thatcher, mary mcaleese, mary robinson, michelle bachelet, newmarket press, orca books, politics, portia simpson-miller, president, prime minister, seal press, some women born leaders, tarja halonen, women, world leaders, youth, yulia tymoshenko

I think that aside from just being born as leaders, there are a number of feminists who are also born with an incredible generosity of spirit. I could tell you countless stories of the support and help and mentorship that I have received from fabulous feminist women that has made such a difference in my life and the work that I do.

One great story is a recent one. When I announced my book project on a national feminist listserv (Par-L for those who are curious), the generosity of the replies that I got truly humbled and touched me! Within a couple of hours, the President of the Canadian YWCA had e-mailed me with an offer to try to contact two of the women leaders who were on my list who the World YWCA had worked with in the past. Also, one of my activist soul mates, the phenomenal Jessica Notwell (whom I met at the UN’s 52^nd Meeting of the Status of Women and who is involved in the World YWCA and who is also the Manager of the Women’s Economic Council) e-mailed me to tell me she would be on a panel with Mary Robinson in March and would tell her about my book project.

Finally, the publisher at a feminist press in Canada sent me an e-mail wondering if she could help. Of course, I quickly dispatched a reply to her with a copy of the book proposal asap. I am still waiting to hear back from all of them and I will update you when I do.

My strategy is to try to get at least one of the women that they have connections to to do an interview. That way, when I send e-mails to the other politicians, they will recognize the names of the women I have already interviewed and be more likely to participate.

Wish me luck! Or send me your own generous offer to help!

UNCSW 54 final day

This is part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 10

I’m sitting in the couched area outside of the Delegates Dining room as I type on the last day of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women. I’m waiting for a personal address from Hillary Clinton.

Antigone Launches Feminist Social Networking Site on International Women’s Day!

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Blog for IWD, canadian, change., feminist, movement, social networking, women

This post is part of Blog for International Women’s Day

Hi Friends!

Happy International Women’s Day!
My name is Amanda Reaume and I am the Executive Director of The Antigone Foundation. We believe it’s time for Canada’s feminists and women’s organizations to work together to leverage the power of social networking to connect around common causes and concerns across the country, both online and in person.

That is why we are launching Antigone Connect , an online site working to engage women’s organizations and feminists across the country to work collaboratively for women’s rights and equality in Canada and around the world.

Our Goal:

We are hoping to create a powerful online network that will be able to help lead the Canadian women’s movement forward in the coming years. As we approach Canada’s 150th Anniversary, we are all aware that there is a great deal more to be done in Canada to ensure women’s equality. More women in politics and managerial positions, accessible child care, changes to the Indian Act, equal pay, and equal pensions are just a few of the things that the Royal Commission on the Status of Women identified as necessary for equality nearly fifty years ago. They have still not been fully realized and this is going to take cooperation and coordination to accomplish.

Canadian Women’s History

This past fall, Antigone Magazine put together an issue about Canadian Women’s History and we spoke to Marilou McPhedran. She talked about how women organized around constitutional issues in the 1980s to ensure that women were included within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As McPhedran mentions, they did this without even a fax machine. With phone trees, letters to MPs and a lot of conviction, these women changed our country. We can too. Many of us now have access to e-mail, the internet, social networking, maybe even Blackberries and Smartphones. Some also have well paying jobs and contacts with women and men in power who support work for women’s equality. We owe it to our foremothers to leverage all the technologies and privileges that we have to connect and make sure that their legacies are not forgotten.

Your Help

But this network is not going to happen overnight. We need your help in the days and weeks ahead to expand it and bring to the table the voices of women from all backgrounds, from groups that might not readily identify as feminists, or those who might have difficulties accessing the internet, and the voices of women and men that are allies to the work that we do. We need you to tell people about it. To e-mail your contacts about it. To post it on Facebook or Twitter. To contact your friends who might have worked for feminist causes in the past but who have gone off in other directions. To help the technically unsavvy negotiate the technology! We need to come together to create this network across Canada.

Canadian Women’s Future!

Inspired by the next issue of our magazine (to be released in March 2010) entitled The Future of Feminism, we will be offering individuals and organizations opportunities to write about their visions for Canadian feminism. In blog entries, on Antigone Connect forums, on Dreams for Women postcards, and by leading online chats, we invite people to contribute to imagining the future of feminism. Email us at antigonemagazine at hotmail.com if you are interested in helping out.

Join Us

We launched this campaign this week and we are moved and excited by the response so far. It would be great to see you at Antigone Connect.

Thanks in advance for giving this a few minutes of your time, and for sharing this message with anyone you know who would like the women of Canada to unite together to transform our country.

Thank you!

Amanda Reaume and the Antigone Team

Executive Director, The Antigone Foundation
www.antigonefoundation.wordpress.com
Author and blogger, Some Leaders Are Born Women
www.someleadersarebornwomen.wordpress.com

photo credit: wikimedia commons

UNCSW 54: March 4

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Commission on the Status of Women, international women's day, United Nations

This post is part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 , Part 9 , Part 10
I am lagging lagging lagging behind, but luckily for me, I have been live tweeting, which means that not only can interested readers follow along in point form (search #csw54 at twitter.com) but I can go back and refresh my memory from the tweets!

March 4th (Thursday) seemed to hold a Rural women’s theme. I began the day at a session highlighting the work of the Salesian Sisters in rural South America. The Sister’s panel was made up of women who had accessed their services in Ecuador and Guatemala. The women talked about the circumstances that they had come to the Sisters from.

UNCSW 54 March 3rd

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Commission on the Status of Women, United Nations

This post is part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 8 , Part 9 , Part 10

March 3rd was the day that the United Nations Celebrated International Women’s Day. The occasion is celebrated a few days before the actual event to allow Delegates to the UN the chance to get home in time to celebrate with their communities.

I started the Day at the NGO general briefing at the Salvation Army. A South East Asian delegate asked if we could lobby for a resolution specific to women in extreme poverty and women with disability with our respective government meetings and regional caucuses. The Women’s Labour Congress also asked us to join them in their lobby for a resolution on women’s economic empowerment, and women from Arabic women’s caucus would like to see a resolution on women in occupied territories, and the general women’s labour group finished and released a draft of their open letter to the Secretary General about the long lines and poor state of the UNCSW.

After the NGO debrief I moved back to the main building and made my way to the overflow room (Conference Room 2) to watch the UN celebration of International Womens Day.

It was very nice, the Secretary General made a wonderful and engaging address. He spoke about the way that he honors women because he is a husband and a father and a grandfather. He talked about how important he felt it was for men throughout the world to recognize that violence against women is a direct violation of their inalienable human rights.

UNCSW 54 March 2nd Country Reports

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Beijing Platform for Action, Commission on the Status of Women, United Nations

This post is part of a series on the 54th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Click on a link to read further.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9 , Part 10

The theme of this UNCSW is the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. You can find the Platform here:

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/

The 54th UNCSW has focused on taking stock of the progress that has been made in the implementation of the platform, as well as using the opportunity to identify and prioritize the ways that we need to move forward. The main indicators that countries seem to be reporting on are access to education, political participation, economic security and violence against women. The latter three priorities are mirrored in the “Three Pillars” that the Status of Women Canada seem to talk about so often.