In 1889, Jane Addams created a space and community for social exchange, sympathetic knowledge, and the iteration of an ethics of care. I believe her physical disability probably had an effect on her perspective, but I haven’t seen anyone write about this aspect of her thought. She was a fabulous writer who published eleven books and hundreds of articles. Her influence was enormous—presidential candidates even sought her endorsement—and she was brilliant, but the profundity of her thinking is only now being acknowledged by the academy, probably now because there have been enough women philosophers expanding the field of ethics so that we can actually understand what Jane was doing. I listened to an audio book of her classic work from 1910, Twenty Years at Hull House, and I recommend this work to everyone. It is so well-written. This paragraph made an impression on me:
“We are slowly learning that social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty, and of this one could cite many illustrations. I was at one time chairman of the Child Labor Committee in the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, which sent out a schedule asking each club in the United States to report as nearly as possible all the working children under fourteen living in its vicinity. A Florida club filled out the schedule with an astonishing number of Cuban children who were at work in sugar mills, and the club members registered a complaint that our committee had sent the schedule too late, for if they had realized the conditions earlier, they might have presented a bill to the legislature which had now adjourned. Of course the children had been working in the sugar mills for years, and had probably gone back and forth under the very eyes of the club women, but the women had never seen them, much less felt any obligation to protect them, until they joined a club, and the club joined a Federation, and the Federation appointed a Child Labor Committee who sent them a schedule. With their quickened perceptions they then saw the rescue of these familiar children in the light of a social obligation. Through some such experiences the members of the Hull-House Woman’s Club have obtained the power of seeing the concrete through the general and have entered into various undertakings.”
Template for a Woman Leader
Jane Addams lived from 1860 to 1935, mostly in Chicago. With Ellen Gates Starr she created the second settlement house in the U.S., based on an English model. Chicago’s Hull House was a place for educated, middle class, mostly women, to “settle” in a stressed immigrant neighborhood and improve conditions so that people could thrive. This community of service, inspired by early Christian communities—yet deliberately not “faith-based”—was an extension into the public realm of a template for women’s leadership in the home. Thus the work of the settlement house was “civic housekeeping,” the wider public becomes the family, and formerly private issues, like sanitation and children’s education, become the public sphere of women’s leadership, before women even had full suffrage in the U.S.
In this way Jane Addams was allowed to become the country’s mother, a woman of authority and a focus of respect in the Progressive era. However, she was later accused of treason, and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover called her “the most dangerous woman in America” because of her peace advocacy during and after the First World War, and during the “Red Scare” of the 1920’s, because of her advocacy for labor rights. In 1931 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace. “Addams was a major synthesizing figure in the domestic and international peace movements, serving as both a figurehead and leading theoretician…” (W) It is interesting to see that once she stopped “staying in her lane” as a woman leader, and entered the realm of international affairs, she became “dangerous”. She was really getting at the systems of oppressions then. Her leadership style was noted by a co-delegate to the 1915 International Congress of Women in The Hague, “Miss Addams shines, so respectful of everyone’s views, so eager to understand and sympathize, so patient of anarchy and even ego, yet always there, strong, wise and in the lead. No ‘managing’, no keeping dark and bringing things subtly to pass, just a radiating wisdom and power of judgement.” (W)
A Woman Leader Created a Woman-Identified Space
“The reputation of the settlement rapidly grew, and women, primarily college-educated, came from all over the country to live and work at Hull House. Although Hull House was co-educational, it was a woman-identified space. There were male residents at Hull House, some of whom later became prominent leaders. However, the policies, projects, decision-making, and methodologies of the Hull House community were gynocentric—foregrounding women’s experience, analysis, and concerns. Furthermore, although a few residents were married, most were single, and some were in committed relationships with other women. Given the drastic shifts in sexual mores in the twentieth century, the contemporary understanding of what it means to be lesbian cannot straightforwardly be mapped onto the late and post-Victorian eras. Still, it can be argued that Hull House was a lesbian-friendly space. Addams set the tone for this identification with her own long-term intimate relationships with women…” (EP)
Social Work and Sociology
Hull House provided space and structure for social clubs, and child care, and the first playground and public swimming pool and gymnasium in Chicago, and classes in English and cooking, and lectures for adults, and art and craft instruction, and an art gallery, a theater program, and a museum of labor that showcased the traditional crafts of the neighborhood immigrants. Jane Addams’ mission was to promote the solidarity of the human race through conviviality and exchange. In the process she invented social work as a profession. Over time, from interacting with the local people on a personal level, the “settlers” developed an understanding that solutions to recurring social problems would need to be addressed through changes in systems and institutions. “… the work of Hull House residents would result in numerous labor union organizations, … tenement codes, factory laws, child labor laws, adult education courses, cultural exchange groups, and the collection of neighborhood demographic data.” (EP) The neighborhoods became an area of study at the same time that sociology became an academic discipline at the University of Chicago. Hull House members engaged in research and publishing, and public advocacy. Although she regularly taught courses in the brand new sociology department at the University of Chicago, Jane declined to become an academic because she wanted to maintain her independence and her political activism.
“Addams’ philosophy combined feminist sensibilities with an unwavering commitment to social improvement through cooperative efforts. Although she sympathized with feminists, socialists, and pacifists, Addams refused to be labeled. This refusal was pragmatic rather than ideological. Addams’ commitment to social cohesion and cooperation prompted her to eschew what she perceived as divisive distinctions. Active democratic social progress was so essential to Addams that she did not want to alienate any group of people from the conversation or the participation necessary for effective inclusive deliberation.” (EP)
Kickass Accomplishments
Jane “identified the political corruption and business avarice that caused the city bureaucracy to ignore health, sanitation, and building codes. Linking environmental justice and municipal reform, she eventually defeated the bosses and fostered a more equitable distribution of city services and modernized inspection practices.” (W)
“Addams led the “garbage wars”; in 1894 she became the first woman appointed as sanitary inspector of Chicago’s 19th Ward. With the help of the Hull House Women’s Club, within a year over 1,000 health department violations were reported to city council and garbage collection reduced death and disease.” (W)
“Hull House stressed the importance of the role of children in the Americanization process of new immigrants. This philosophy also fostered the play movement and the research and service fields of leisure, youth, and human services. Addams argued in The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) that play and recreation programs are needed because cities are destroying the spirit of youth.” (W)
“Along with her colleagues from Hull House, in 1901 Jane Addams founded what would become the Juvenile Protective Association. JPA provided the first probation officers for the first Juvenile Court in the United States until this became a government function.” (W)
Jane was a brilliant philosopher. She was always acting on many levels at once. “Addams did not intend to engage in philosophical narratives removed from social improvement, nor did she intend to pursue social activism without theorizing about the broader implications of her work. In this respect, through her integration of theory and action, Addams carried pragmatism to its logical conclusion through her integration of theory and action, developing an applied philosophy immersed in social action.” (EP)
“Addams’ ethical philosophy was guided by the notion of sympathetic knowledge that she described as ‘the only way of approach to any human problem’. Sympathetic knowledge is a mingling of epistemology and ethics: knowing one another better reinforces the common connection of people such that the potential for caring and empathetic moral actions increases. Addams not only theorized about this idea, but she lived it. Sympathetic knowledge underwrote Addams’ approach to the diversity and staggering poverty that she confronted in the immigrant neighborhood surrounding Hull House and allowed her to develop a precursor to contemporary feminist standpoint epistemology. Addams’ leadership among the American pragmatists in understanding the poor and oppressed resulted in a more radical form of pragmatism than Dewey and James, a social philosophy imbued with a class and gender consciousness.” (EP)
Great minds and change agents: So many amazing people are associated with Hull House, mostly women. It was kind of a feminist think-tank. Just some of these people include: Frances Perkins (Secretary of Labor); Florence Kelley (social reformer, political activist who defended the rights of working women and children, she fought racism); Alice Hamilton (founded the field of industrial medicine); Julia Lathrop (headed the Children’s Bureau, a federal agency); Rachel Yarros (physician and professor of medicine); Charlotte Perkins Gilman (author and scholar of gender and economics); Sophonisba Breckinridge. PhD, JD, social work educator; Edith and Grace Abbott (sisters and academics); Mary Kenney (labor organizer for the AF of L); Bessie Abramowitz Hillman (founded the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America); Alzina Stevens (headed the Dorcas Federal Labor Union).
Organizations she was there for from their beginnings
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the first 40 (NAACP)
American Civil Liberties Union, founder (ACLU)
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
“Addams worked with other reform groups toward goals including the first juvenile court law, tenement-house regulation, an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workers’ compensation. She advocated research aimed at determining the causes of poverty and crime, and she supported women’s suffrage. She was a strong advocate of justice for immigrants, African Americans, and minority groups by becoming a chartered member of the NAACP. Among the projects that the members of Hull House opened were the Immigrants’ Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the United States, and a juvenile psychopathic clinic…. Addams’s influential writings and speeches, on behalf of the formation of the League of Nations and as a peace advocate, influenced the later shape of the United Nations.” (W)
PROTECT – perSISTERS print design for Leydy Pech, the Mayan beekeeper who fought the mega-agri-business Monsanto in court, and won. Purchase this print in the store.
Leydy Pech, an indigenous Mayan beekeeper, led a coalition that successfully halted Monsanto’s planting of “round-up ready” soybeans in southern Mexico. The genetically modified beans are not vulnerable to a specific herbicide, so the crop can be sprayed and only the weeds are killed. But the herbicide is carcinogenic and damages the delicate natural balance that supports the native stingless bees and also the Mayan way of life that depends on the bees. The Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the government violated the Mayans’ constitutional rights and suspended the planting of genetically modified soybeans. Because of the persistence of Pech and her coalition, in September 2017, Mexico’s Food and Agricultural Service revoked Monsanto’s permit to grow the soybeans in seven states. For her efforts, in 2020 Pech was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
Leydy Pech’s powerful act is to PROTECT. She protects her bees, the environment that supports her bees, and her people who depend on the health and happiness of the bees. Read on and you will learn that these bees are remarkable and worth protecting. The stories reference a mode of value outside of money.
The following is a statement by 2020 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Leydy Pech:
Today is a historic day for the Maya people.
My name is Leydy Aracely Pech Martín. I am from the community of Ich-ek, municipality of Hopelchén, State of Campeche.
I am grateful to the Goldman Foundation for recognizing the work of the Maya communities of Hopelchén in defense of their territory against industrial agriculture and GMOs.
The award gives me the opportunity to tell the world that the territories of indigenous peoples are being dispossessed by extractive megaprojects, agro-industry, tourism and others that strengthen a capitalist model that affects natural resources and our way of life.
I call on all governments and world leaders to rethink more comprehensive development models that respect and recognize human rights, autonomy, self-determination of Indigenous peoples and ancestral heritage.
The state of Campeche in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula features an ancient mixture of forests, beekeeping, local agriculture, and deep-seated Mayan culture. Mexico is the world’s sixth largest producer of honey, and 40% of the nation’s honey production originates from the Yucatán Peninsula. In Campeche, 25,000 families—especially within indigenous Mayan communities—depend on honey production for their livelihoods.
Beekeeping is also integral to Mayan culture and a key factor in the protection of Campeche’s forests. Recently, with the rise of industrial agriculture, the state lost nearly 94,000 acres of forest—the highest rate of deforestation in Mexico.
In 2000, Monsanto began growing small, experimental plots of genetically modified (GM) soybeans in Mexico. In 2010 and 2011, these projects were elevated to “pilot projects” by the government. The GM soybean used by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) is known as “Roundup Ready,” a reference to the plant’s programmed genetic tolerance to high doses of the herbicide Roundup (also a Monsanto product). The main ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate, a probable carcinogen that is also linked to miscarriages and birth defects.
In 2012, the Mexican government granted Monsanto permits to plant GM soybeans in seven Mexican states, including Campeche and the Yucatán, without consultation by local communities. It was soon apparent that the GM crops were contaminating local honey in Campeche, threatening the food supply, environment, and livelihoods of the Mayan communities.
A Mayan Lady of Honey
Leydy Pech, 55, is a proud Mayan woman who makes her living as a beekeeper in a collective of Mayan women. She was born and raised in Hopelchén, where the practice of beekeeping goes back centuries for the Mayan community. Pech has focused her beekeeping practice on a rare native bee species, Melipona beecheii. She is also a promoter of sustainable development for rural Mayan communities as a member of Koolel-Kab/Muuchkambal, an organic farming and agroforestry cooperative composed solely of Mayan women.
Beekeepers Fight Back
In June 2012, in response to the planting of GM soybeans in the region, Pech brought beekeepers, NGOs, and environmentalists together in a coalition known as Sin Transgenicos (Without GMOs). That same month, Pech led the group in filing a lawsuit against the Mexican government to stop the planting of GM soybeans. Their case rested on the fact that neither the government nor Monsanto consulted indigenous communities before approving the permits—in violation of the Mexican Constitution and International Labor Organization’s Convention 169.
Pech reached out to academic institutions for assistance documenting the impacts of GM soy cultivation on honey, the environment, and people. As a result, the Universidad Autonoma carried out a study of GM soybean production in Campeche—where Monsanto had conducted a pilot project—confirming that GM soy pollen was present in the local honey supply. The Universidad Autonoma and the UN Development Programme also charted the impacts of glyphosate, finding traces of the herbicide in the water supply of Hopelchén, and in the urine of the town’s residents.
With this data in hand, Pech and her Mayan collective began an outreach and education campaign to local communities and government officials about the negative impacts of GM soybean production. They organized a series of workshops for activists and organizations to exchange information and research, launched petitions, and arranged simultaneous protests in seven Mayan ceremonial centers across the Yucatán Peninsula, with approximately 2,000 participants.
In November 2015, in response to the coalition’s lawsuit, Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government must consult indigenous communities before planting GM soybeans. The ruling effectively canceled Monsanto’s permits and prohibited the planting of GM soybeans in Campeche and Yucatán. And, in September 2017, thanks to Pech’s organizing, Mexico’s Food and Agricultural Service revoked Monsanto’s permit to grow genetically modified soybeans in seven states, including Campeche and Yucatán. This decision marks the first time that the Mexican government has taken official action to protect communities and the environment from GM crops.
Pech and the coalition’s historic fight is precedent-setting for Mexico, and already a model for other indigenous movements struggling to preserve indigenous rights and land management. Carrying out a “lucha de la vida” (a struggle for life), she brought together a diverse group of activists and stakeholders and organized thousands of people through outreach, assemblies, and petitions. An unassuming but powerful guardian of Mayan land and traditions, Pech experienced frequent discrimination and was widely underestimated: upon seeing her in person following her court victory, a lawyer for Monsanto remarked that he couldn’t believe that this little woman beat them.
EFRAIN CAB, A 34-YEAR-OLD BEEKEEPER who runs a hotline for stingless bees in need, stood in front of the wall of a hotel in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, with a hammer in his hand.
He had responded to an emergency text from 11-year-old Eugenia, who had secretly contacted Cab from her mother’s phone. She wanted to save the bees her parents intended to fumigate.
Eugenia now pointed at a small hole in a brick wall.
“Put pieces of tissue inside your ear, and do not squash them when they get entangled in your hair. They’re just defending themselves,” Cab said with a stern look.
With precise movements, he started hammering the wall. As he cautiously pulled out the debris, a swarm of stingless bees poured out, flying into his beard, hair, and ears. Undeterred, Cab surgically removed the alien-looking hive and placed it inside a wooden box he had brought along. Cab’s face soon took on a sheen of sweat, as he strove not to hurt the swarm. Before closing the lid of the box, he added in the dazed bees who had not left the shelter, one by one, and made sure the queen was in the hive.
“Now they have to rest,” Cab said, visibly exhausted.
There are around 500 species of Meliponini stingless bees in tropical and subtropical areas around the world. 47 live in Mexico, and the most famous bee in the Yucatán peninsula is Melipona beecheii, known by the Mayans as Xunan Kab, or the Regal Lady Bee.
Meliponini honey is rare and expensive. In the United States, 250 grams of Meliponini honey costs around $50. Stingless bees live in small colonies and produce just over three pounds of honey per year, while their stinging counterparts produce almost 20 times more. They store their liquid honey in small waxy pots built into their hives. Its flavor is an explosion of acidity and sweetness, paired with an intense flowery fragrance.
But Cab doesn’t aim to profit off the bees for their honey. Loading the hive into his car, he drove it back to his home in the Playa del Carmen suburbs, where he runs Trigonario Urbano Cab, a hospital for rescued stingless bees. The rescued hive would rest and recuperate amongst 60 other colonies, before Cab would take them to their final home: a sanctuary he has built in the middle of the Mayan jungle.
“Cab means bee,” Cab tells me, adding that he learned about bees from his father and grandfather, both beekeepers themselves. In fact, he claims that all his ancestors were Meliponini beekeepers. But it wasn’t until 2001 that he started taking care of his own hives. A friend working in construction asked him to pick up a colony that otherwise would have been destroyed. Then he saved a second hive, and then a third. News of his bee operation started spreading. Since then, Cab the beekeeper has saved more than 100 hives.
Jorge Gonzalez Acereto is a bee expert and former professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán. A beekeeper himself with 40 colonies, Acereto notes that Meliponini bees were central to the Mayan cosmogony, or their vision of how the universe came to be.
“The Mayans believed that the bees were a gift from the gods,” Acereto says. Ancient Mayans thought that nectar was a concentration of the sun’s power, which bees transferred into their honey. Mayans cared for bees religiously, and the bees, in turn, gave them wax, honey, and pollinated crops.
Maria Luisa Dorantes, Cab’s mother, explains that Mayan descendants use Meliponini honey primarily as a medicine. “If you get a bad cut which doesn’t heal, you wrap the honey around it and it’s gone in three days,” Dorantes says. Daughter of a herbadera, a Mayan herbalist, Dorantes notes that the honey is also used to treat a variety of diseases, including cataracts, ulcers, and diabetes. Her claim is supported by bacteriologists, who have studied how Meliponini honey’s acidity and high levels of bacillus effectively inhibit pathogenic bacterial growth.
Acereto explains that beekeepers provided a central social service for the ancient Mayan community, by providing honey for free when the sick needed it. Beekeeping was a charitable activity, for which they could not ask for anything in return.
“This is the inheritance that I have, and I have to protect it,” Cab says. He makes his living as a construction worker, but spends all his free time with the bees. Cab doesn’t often sell his honey, and usually harvests it for his family and to help others in need.
With the colonization of the peninsula in the 17th century, the Spaniards introduced Apis mellifera, the common stinging bee, which aggressively invaded Meliponini territory. Many beekeepers began rearing the new bees for their higher honey production. Just a few domestic hives of Meliponini, kept in the remotest Mayan villages, survived the change.
Cab’s untiring efforts to rescue hives is essential work. Ricardo Ayala Barajas, a bee taxonomist at the Biology Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that although there is a cultural push to protect stingless bees, they are still endangered. Barajas names pesticides, deforestation, and careless beekeeping practices as causes of the decline.
“We’ll reach a point of no return soon,” Barajas says.
Efrain Cab is not the only stingless beekeeper. Meliponini honey is highly lucrative. Acereto explains that as demand for the precious honey went up, foreigners and greedy beekeepers began venturing into the jungle to cut down trees to get to Meliponini hives. New beekeepers do not seem to understand the ancestral techniques used to harvest the colonies, which is key to keeping bees healthy. Many end up killing the fragile hives, Acereto adds.
Valerio, Cab’s father, says that not everybody is suited for the task of keeping stingless bees. Tradition requires a certain purity on the part of the beekeeper. “You cannot take care of the bee without being ready,” he says. “You cannot drink alcohol and you need harmony within the family. If bees feel the tension, they go away or die.”
After a period of rest and rebuilding, Cab took Eugenia’s hive back into the forest. A wooden canopy, constructed by Cab, shelters the harmless stingless bees. It is hidden deep within the jungle, where, legend has it, spirits and forgotten gods still roam.
Cab is now teaching his four-year-old son to care for the bees. His hope is that there will be someone to safeguard the bees, when he is gone. “This is what I will leave to my children,” Cab says. “Because I don’t believe in money.”
VOICE, new perSISTERS design for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials, AOC, is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district since 2019. The district includes the eastern part of the Bronx, portions of north-central Queens, and Rikers Island in New York City. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-Cortez drew national recognition when she won the Democratic Party’s primary election for New York’s 14th congressional district on June 26, 2018. She defeated Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, in what was widely seen as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries. She defeated Republican opponent Anthony Pappas in the November 2018 general election. She was reelected in the 2020 election, defeating John Cummings.
Taking office at age 29, Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States Congress. Ocasio-Cortez attended Boston University, where she double-majored in international relations and economics, graduating cum laude. She was previously an activist and worked as a waitress and bartender before running for Congress in 2018. Wikipedia
“Voice.” It’s a verb, too. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voices power, compassion, and beauty. For a while people have been asking me to make a design for AOC. I have always replied, “Yes, I love her, and I’m waiting for her to do something that I can focus on.” Now I know what she is doing, and she’s done it many times. She is brave voice personified. She has a platform, not just as a congresswoman, but also as a carefully developed social media presence, and she uses it artfully. I imagine she grew up hearing Audre Lorde’s message and ate it for breakfast: “Your silence will not protect you.” She seeks to protect with her voice and actions. I have picked out three occasions to demonstrate VOICE.
Mary Beard in her book Women and Power, a Manifesto talks about how, in ancient Greece and Rome (and still today!) the sound of a woman’s voice was thought to be outside the realm of power. It was hated, in fact, and denied a public place. It was thought too high and screechy, and we still hear commentators denigrate the speech of women candidates as “shrill”. For a long time women politicians (and influencers like Glennon Doyle) have been advised to lower their voices so that they can be taken seriously: to make their voices more like men’s voices. I don’t know if AOC tries to lower her voice. I think that she sounds young and womanly. I want to say adorable, actually. The more she speaks, I hope, the more we will get used to hearing a woman’s voice being a voice of power. She has so much to say and I hope she continues to have this immense strength and courage to withstand the attacks. I’m sure she will continue to voice more, and perhaps more important, truths after I send this design into the world. This is just a snapshot in time.
NAME IT “the only time religious freedom is invoked, it’s in the name of bigotry and discrimination”
February 28, 2020 During a hearing in the U.S. House about the “Administration’s Religious Liberty Assault on LGBTQ Rights‘,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it clear that Donald Trump and other Republicans have used religion—her faith included—to justify all kinds of atrocities against the very people who need the protection of the government.
“There is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is. There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital. There’s nothing holy about rejecting a child from a family. There’s nothing holy about writing discrimination into the law, and I am tired of communities of faith being weaponized and being mischaracterized, because the only time religious freedom is invoked, it’s in the name of bigotry and discrimination. I’m tired of it. … I just have to get that out ahead of time, because it is deeply disturbing, not just what is happening here, but what this administration is advancing is the idea that religion and faith is about exclusion. It is not up to us. It is not up to us to deny medical care. It is up to us to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor, to protect children, and to love all people as ourselves.”
CALL THEM OUT “It is cultural. It is a culture of impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that.”
July 23, 2020 AOC gives a speech in the House calling out Rep Yoho for insulting her on the House steps two days previously. At the time, a reporter overheard the man call AOC a “fucking bitch,” after calling her “crazy.” She uses this occasion (her speech) to decry dehumanizing language. It is a beautiful speech that she mostly improvised. When you read the transcript you can see she made some mistakes, but when you see her on video you don’t feel them as mistakes. You know what she means. My favorite part is when she says “And so what I believe is that having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man.” The way she switches the place of “decent”: it’s lovely and artful. She published a photo of her notebook with the notes for her speech, which are very rough, and you can see that the notes do not switch the place of the word “decent”. I believe it was the improvisational music in the moment that prompted her to alter those words to make them perfect. This is rhetoric as music and not just persuasion.
AOC’s notes for her speech 7/23/2020, from her Instagram feed.
“So while I was not deeply hurt or offended by little comments that are made, when I was reflecting on this, I honestly thought that I was just going to pack it up and go home. It’s just another day, right? But then yesterday, Representative Yoho decided to come to the floor of the House of Representatives and make excuses for his behavior, and that I could not let go. I could not allow my nieces, I could not allow the little girls that I go home to, I could not allow victims of verbal abuse and worse to see that, to see that excuse and to see our Congress accept it as legitimate and accept it as an apology and to accept silence as a form of acceptance. I could not allow that to stand which is why I am rising today to raise this point of personal privilege.
I do not need Representative Yoho to apologize to me. Clearly he does not want to. Clearly when given the opportunity he will not and I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse over calling women and using abusive language towards women, but what I do have issue with is using women, our wives and daughters, as shields and excuses for poor behavior. Mr. Yoho mentioned that he has a wife and two daughters. I am two years younger than Mr. Yoho’s youngest daughter. I am someone’s daughter too. My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter. My mother got to see Mr. Yoho’s disrespect on the floor of this House towards me on television and I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men.”
TELL IT February 1, 2021 AOC tells her personal story and relates it to the story of the country. In a powerful and emotional talk on Instagram live, AOC says she’s a survivor of sexual assault, and the Republicans telling her to “just move on” from the attack on the Capitol, in which her life was threatened, are using abusers’ tactics. She also describes how it was hard to trust some of the police officers who were directing the lawmakers on how to protect themselves during the January 6th terrorist assault on the capitol.
“The folks who are saying we should move on, we shouldn’t have accountability, etc., are saying: ‘Can you just forget about this so that we can do it again?’…I’m not going to let it happen to me again … and I’m not going to let it happen to our country.”
She talks about trauma and that it needs to be treated to maintain one’s health. (See below: Wilma Mankiller perSISTER print, BE OF GOOD MIND.)
It is very brave for a lawmaker to reveal her own vulnerability in this way. She has turned vulnerability into power by using her voice. We know this about women’s power: that it is about legitimizing the fact that the personal is political. But it has to be true, too. To say that you love some women—your wife or your daughter, and are loved by them, too—that does not mean that you aren’t perpetuating misogyny. That is just the way to fool yourself into believing that you are exempt from the claim or responsibility that love makes on you to repair the world.
Stacey Yvonne Abrams (born December 9, 1973) is a bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO, and American political leader. She served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, serving as Democratic (minority) Leader from 2011 to 2017.
Abrams was the Democratic nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, becoming the first African-American female major-party gubernatorial nominee in the United States, winning more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. She lost to Brian Kemp in an election marked by widely accepted accusations that Kemp engaged in voter suppression as Georgia Secretary of State.
Abrams writes about this defeat in the preface to her book, Lead From the Outside:
“In my non-concession speech, most political folks expected me to turn a blind eye to the complaints and the outcome. They were looking for me to say that no compromise of our democracy had occurred, and most expected polite compromise in the language I used to call an end to the fight. But, unfortunately for them, I’d read my book. And I understand conceding the election would not be right. I admit the playing field is never level, and the reality is that a number of us enjoy a degree of privilege over another at various points. Yet, knowing a truth does not make it correct. Right and wrong remain valid, real constructs, and the 2018 Georgia elections crossed the line. And I said so. On national television.
Concession accepts an act as right or proper. And society’s existence necessitates the act of compromise—of bending our wants to the needs of others. Leadership is a constant search for the distinction between when compromise is an act of power and when concession masks submission—or when the fight is on. I know this election demanded a moment to be uncompromising—to build a future without conceding my principles. I refused to be gaslighted into throwing away my power, diminishing my voice. Because I don’t simply speak for myself. I had the hopes, dreams and demands of 1.9 million Georgians standing with me. And thousands more who had been unfairly, unlawfully silenced. And whether speaking up is about an unfair election or a flawed system of workplace promotion, the obligation remains the same: once we recognize that wrong exists, we must fight to change it every day.”
Stacey Abrams had co-founded the New Georgia Project in 2014, a year after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, removing safeguards and reducing federal oversight of states. The project identified the “New American Majority” – people of color, those 18 to 29 years of age, and unmarried women as key to Georgia’s future. In the wake of the 2018 election, Abrams launched Fair Fight Action and Fair Fight 2020 to defend voting rights. She also launched Fair Count to ensure accuracy in the 2020 Census and greater participation in civic engagement, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a public policy initiative to broaden economic power and build equity in the South. In all these initiatives she has made a point to give credit to her collaborators.
Her efforts have been widely credited with boosting voter turnout in Georgia, including in the 2020 presidential election, when Joe Biden won the state, and in Georgia’s 2020–21 U.S. Senate election and special election, which gave Democrats control over the US Senate.
DESIGN NOTE
One curious thing about selling at street markets and festivals is that, even though I am sitting right there, people often react to the work as if it is not mine. I could be just a booth sitter and not the maker, after all, and many assume that, for some reason. Sometimes I feel invisible. That means I can learn a lot from the frank things people say. Last winter downtown some young women were looking at the pin-back buttons, which were right in front of me, but I was masked and behind the plexiglass and grid wall. One of them said, “’Take Credit,’ I like that one” and the other woman said, “I wish they had, ‘Take Initiative’.” Why a great idea! But I like the words “Start Something” better. It didn’t take me long before I realized this was the message for a Stacey Abrams print. Sometimes I know I want to do a piece about someone but it takes a while for me to come up with a crystallized message. One compelling thing about Stacey Abrams’ power is that she doesn’t do it all herself, she is a catalyst and organizer, and she shares the credit with her comrades, so the message is two things: “Start Something” and “Spark Something”. She didn’t just start something, she motivated others, and she persisted even after “failing”, and it made a difference and will continue to make a difference. I’m quoting a FB friend (who’s not a woman) when I say, “Lord help us if Black women ever give up on American democracy.”
This illustration is based on a photo by Kerri Battles for LBJ School, captured 21 February 2012, at the Barbara Jordan Forum, when Stacey Abrams was a Georgia State Representative. The photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
BE OF GOOD MIND perSISTERS print for Wilma Mankiller
I want to highlight some things in the story of Wilma Mankiller, who was the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation for ten years. The Cherokee Nation is a Native American tribe.
Although she met enormous resistance as a leader because of her sex, women traditionally held political power among the Cherokee before they encountered patriarchal Europeans. All treaties had to be approved by a women’s council as well as the men’s, and the male chiefs were trained and guided by women leaders.
“In the times before the Cherokees learned the ways of others, they paid extraordinary respect to women.
So when a man married, he took up residence with the clan of his wife. The women of each of the seven clans elected their own leaders. These leaders convened as the Women’s Council, and sometimes raised their voices in judgement to override the authority of the chiefs when the women believed the welfare of the tribe demanded such an action. It was common custom among the ancient Cherokees that any important questions relating to war and peace were left to a vote of the women.
There were brave Cherokee women who followed their husbands and brothers into battle. These female warriors were called War Women or Pretty Women, and they were considered dignitaries of the tribe, many of them being as powerful in council as in battle.
The Cherokees also had a custom of assigning to a certain woman the task of declaring whether pardon or punishment should be inflicted on great offenders.”
From the memoir. (The women were in charge of mercy!)
When she was 34, in 1979, Mankiller was gravely injured in a car accident. She was in a head-on collision and her best friend was in the other car, and her friend died. Mankiller was very near death and remembers deciding to come back to be with her young daughters. Not only was her body severely damaged, she also had to deal with the grief and guilt of being involved in the death of her friend. Mankiller met many difficulties in her life, but when she talks about this in her autobiography, it seems like this was a defining event in her life, something that divided her story in two. In the documentary film, a friend says that Wilma told her that after this experience, she was no longer afraid of death. But she was also no longer afraid to live. “That accident changed my life. I had experienced death, felt its presence, touched it, and then let it go. It was a very spiritual thing, a rare natural gift. From that point on, I have always thought of myself as the woman who lived before and the woman who lives afterward.”
Mankiller writes: “During the long healing process, I fell back on my Cherokee ways and adopted what our elders call ‘a Cherokee approach’ to life. They say it is ‘being of good mind.’ That means one has to think positively, to take what is handed out and turn it into a better path. At the beginning of some Cherokee traditional prayers and healing ceremonies, everyone is asked to remove all negative things from the mind, to have a pure mind and heart for the prayer and ceremony ahead. I tried to do that in the process of healing.” …
“Within only a very few years, I would become first of all deputy chief and then principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. … But none of that would have happened if it had not been for the ordeals I had survived in the first place. After that, I realized I could survive anything. I had faced adversity and turned it into a positive experience—a better path. I had found the way to be of good mind.”
I don’t think her approach to this is as simple as “the power of positive thinking.” She is talking about processing trauma, not about trying to visualize success on a math test. It is not looking away from suffering in order to feel better. Her personal trauma and her family traumas are the foreground to the larger picture of the trauma of the Cherokee people, who had been repeatedly pushed off their land by white settlers and the US government, until finally they were “removed” to the territory that later became the state of Oklahoma. This historic trauma is called by her people, “the trail where we cried” and in English, “The Trail of Tears.” Mankiller had to push through many layers of trauma to be of good mind. I think she approaches this as a mental health issue, that mental health is something you work at. It is process and it is work. It’s not a simple thing to be of good mind in this sense, and it is certainly not a passive removal from responsibility and care. Mankiller’s life, all that she did, shows how caring she was. The love of her life, Charlie Soap, who outlived her, says, “she just had such a big heart.”
DESIGN NOTE
In her memoir, Mankiller talks about the seal of the Cherokee nation, and says that its seven-pointed star represents the seven Cherokee clans. I placed the star three times in this design (besides the one that is behind her and only shows a bit). One is on her brow, one is centered over the place of her birth and her death on an old map (a map that references historic treaties), and one is floating on top of a complete seal. She was able use her “good mind” to create something beautiful and important through a relationship between these three things: her self, her land, and her people. That was her power.
BIOGraphical outline
Wilma Pearl Mankiller (November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was an American Cherokee activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. The surname “Mankiller” refers to a traditional Cherokee military rank, similar to a captain or major, or a shaman with the ability to avenge wrongs through spiritual methods. Wilma said that when people asked her, “How did you get that name?” she liked to joke, “I earned it.”
Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she lived on her family’s allotment in Adair County, Oklahoma, until the age of 11, when her family relocated to San Francisco as part of a federal government program to urbanize Native Americans. The move was traumatic. Her family felt completely out of place. She lived in the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco and learned first hand about poverty and social justice. After high school, she married a well-to-do Ecuadorian and bore two daughters.
Inspired by feminism and the civil and Indian rights movements of the 1960s, Mankiller became involved in the Occupation of Alcatraz and later participated in the land and compensation struggles for the Pit River Tribe. There she learned how to deal with treaty rights, the law, and government bureaucracies. She left her constricting marriage and worked as a social worker, focusing mainly on children’s issues.
Returning to Oklahoma in the fall of 1976, Mankiller was hired by the Cherokee Nation as an economic stimulus coordinator. With her expertise at preparing documentation, she became a successful grant writer, and by the early 1980s was directing the newly created (by her) Community Development Department of the Cherokee Nation. As Director she designed and supervised innovative community projects allowing rural citizens to identify their own challenges and, through their labor, participate in solving them. Her project in Bell, Oklahoma was featured in a movie, and her project in Kenwood received the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Certificate of National Merit.
Her management ability came to the notice of the incumbent Principal Chief, Ross Swimmer, who invited her to run as his deputy in the 1983 tribal elections. Even though they had different party affiliations, he noted that she cared about her people and she could be trusted with money. When the duo won, she became the first elected woman to serve as Deputy Chief of the Cherokee Nation. In 1985, when Swimmer took a position in the federal administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she was elevated to Principal Chief, serving until 1995.
During her administration, the Cherokee government built new health clinics, created a mobile eye-care clinic, established ambulance services, and created early education, adult education and job training programs. She developed revenue streams including factories, retail stores, restaurants, and bingo operations, while establishing self-governance allowing the tribe to manage its own finances. She sought to balance business-based economic development with tribal enterprises and social programs to help the poorest members of the tribe.
Throughout her life, she suffered from serious health problems including polycystic kidney disease, myasthenia gravis, lymphoma, breast cancer, and needed two kidney transplants. She died in 2010 from pancreatic cancer, and was honored with many local, state, and national awards and honors, including the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Wikipedia notes that Mankiller was not the first woman chief of a Native American tribe. Alice Brown Davis became Principal Chief of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma in 1922, and Mildred Cleghorn became the Chairperson of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe in 1976. In earlier times, a number of women led their tribes, such as Nanyehi (Cherokee), Bíawacheeitchish (Gros Ventres-Crow), Vestana Cadue (Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas), Liza Moon Neck (Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of Utah) and Minnie Evans (Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation), among others.
Film: Mankiller,produced by Valerie Redhorse Mohl in 2017
USE THE TOOLS for Ruth Bader Ginsburg
USE THE TOOLS perSISTERS print for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before she became a judge
This is the second design I have made for RBG. The first is one of my most popular, DISSENT. It references the particular collar that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore when she was participating in a judicial dissent. The image of her shows her already established as a Supreme Court Justice. I have also produced some scarves and other garments related to this design. At the holiday market in 2020 I had a visitor who reminded me that RBG was so much more than a dissenter on the court, and she thought it was curious that I was emphasizing that part of her story. I was doing it that way because that was the idea and image that had captured the popular imagination after the “Notorious RBG” Tumblr blog became a sensation. I had to agree with my visitor, though. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s power before she even became a judge was arguably more significant than her time spent on the bench. So here she is again: USE the TOOLS.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (born Joan Ruth Bader; March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S.. Ginsburg was appointed by President Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice to be confirmed to the Court (after Sandra Day O’Connor) and one of six female justices to be confirmed so far (with Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson who are still serving). Following Justice O’Connor’s retirement and prior to Justice Sotomayor joining the Court, Ginsburg was the only female Supreme Court justice. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with, and famous for, her dissents.
Ginsburg spent most of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights, winning multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court. Through her efforts the Supreme Court agreed that the highest level of scrutiny should be applied to any law that discriminates on the basis of sex. She advocated as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, engaging her students at Rutgers Law School in ACLU cases, and founding its Women’s Rights Project, and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where she served until her elevation to the Supreme Court.
After one of her first important cases (Charles E. Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue), the Solicitor General (a government lawyer who argues cases before the Supreme Court) made a list to show how entrenched in Federal law were differentiations made on the basis of sex. This was to make it seem like a very big deal to strike down just one law, because then all these others could be called into question. The goal was to have the Supreme Court question the already-decided case. It was a move to stop change. The Supreme Court declined and let the decision stand to eliminate the sexist law. After this, Ginsburg and her students and ACLU staff used the list to systematically and strategically challenge these sexist laws. One of the most effective techniques was to show how these statutes can unfairly hurt men’s interests. This is one example of how Ginsburg used the tools of patriarchy to advance the feminist cause. “It’s exciting to be able to use your professional tools to advance a cause you believe in.”
This seems to me to be a fundamental question in the fight against patriarchy (or any struggle for liberation). The goal is not to take the same structure and just put women at the top. The task is to reimagine and transform the whole power structure. So, to tear the whole thing down and rebuild, or to perform incremental change from within (after fighting like hell for a place at the table)? It’s a good question. Ginsburg was clearly in the camp of strategic and incremental change. The poet and thinker Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Ginsburg spent her life using the master’s tools to renovate the mansion.
DESIGN NOTE
The image of Ruth is based on a photo copyright by Lynn Gilbert, who allows free use of the photograph. Other images I have used are from the December 1935 issue of the magazine Architecture. This issue has 35 pages of drawings and photographic reproductions of the then newly built Supreme Court building. Cass Gilbert was the designer. I have used one of the floor plan drawings in the background of this print (the Supreme Court is the “Master’s House” that Ruth is using her tools to renovate.) I also have used the photo reproduction of the sculptor’s model of the courtroom frieze depicting the “Law Givers.” One can identify Moses and Hammurabi, for example. What interests me are the symbols of female power depicted: the winged woman, who I am guessing represents justice; and the ankh held by the ancient Egyptian figure (the ankh represents life and is one of the symbols associated with the goddess Isis). The throne that holds justice is decorated with a griffin, a fabulous beast composed of a lion and an eagle. This mythical animal represents the balanced unity of the animal and the rational, of might and of right, of justice and mercy, of the amygdala and the frontal cortex.
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