Feminist Student Leadership Campaign

One of the reasons I was passionate about working for the Feminist Majority Foundation this summer was the opportunity to work with their Campus Choices Leadership Campaign.

As a feminist leader on my own campus, I struggled for two and a half years without guidance until I found out about FMF. However, while I was working independently I was able to run a successful campaign for an elected position in my school's student government.

From that vantage point I have been able to achieve a lot of positive, progressive changes on my campus that I don't think I would have been capable of doing as a regular student. Therefore, I'm excited to collaborate with the Campus Choices Leadership Campaign on refining their current feminist student leadership program, which aims to inspire feminist leaders on college campuses to run for student government positions.

Please look over this sample of a campaign and election timeline for how to run a successful feminist candidate for student government. If you have any comments or concerns, or ideas on how this could be more helpful to you, please let me know. I hope this timeline will inspire those of you who are still in college to run for student government: it really is as easy as this!

RUNNING FOR STUDENT GOVERNMENT AS A FEMINIST CANDIDATE:
Sample Campaign and Election Timeline

EIGHT WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION
●Research your school’s student government and election process. Find out the date of the election and rules for participation. Also research what kind of voting system is used (choice voting, popular election, etc.). Your strategy will be different depending on the voting system; for instance, it may benefit you to run on a slate with other candidates in a choice voting system.
●Contact your FMF Campus Organizer for materials on planning, running, and winning a successful student government campaign.
SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION
●Decide who from your FMLA or feminist campus group will run for office.
●Arrange a meeting with other progressive clubs on campus and ask if they have candidates that want to join your slate.
●With the collaborating clubs, decide what your candidate’s platform goals will be and what change you will bring to campus. Make sure these are attainable goals and that you have a plan for their implementation.
●When the candidates are decided, create facebook groups for each individual candidate, as well as a group for the slate as a whole. Also create an event for the election date itself that you can invite your supporters to.
FOUR WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION
●Develop your outreach strategy. Arrange for class announcements, club announcements, flyering, chalking, buttons and t-shirts.
●Make a schedule of club meetings and classes that you would like to attend and start your visits as early as necessary (but not too early, because you want to make sure people remember your message when it comes time to vote).
●Design flyers with a unifying theme for your slate that outlines your platform. Make sure that your designs for buttons and t-shirts match your flyers -- this is branding.
TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION
●If you haven’t already, start making class announcements and club visits.
●If your school allows it, send emails to list servs you may be on.
●See if you can write an opinion piece for your school newspaper(s) about your campaign, or ask if they will interview you or endorse you. Try every media source on your campus (including radio and tv).
●Begin flyering the campus and giving buttons to supporters.
●If allowed, make A-frames. An A-frame is a large standing sign. You can also find out if you’re allowed to post signs on stakes. If so, prepare those as well.
●Collect email addresses or phone numbers of supporters so that you can call or email them during elections to remind them to vote.
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE ELECTION
●Give tshirts to the core team of supporters and ask them to flyer for you and gather signatures at any major crossroads on your campus.
●Begin chalking in classrooms.
●Put A-frames on campus.
DURING THE ELECTION
●Have a pizza night at a supporter’s house, bring your laptops, and make sure everyone you all know that is online has voted.
●Make sure you chalk classrooms and sidewalks, reminding people to vote.
●Had out quarter sheet flyers with reminders to vote for you.


NOTE: Some of these techniques require money. If you do not have the resources to employ these techniques, there are also plenty of free tactics you can use. For more advice on financing your campaign, please contact your campus organizer.

Campus Organizing Toolkit: Rural Campuses

As part two of my college campus organizing series, I will be focusing on the particular challenges and triumphs that one may face on a rural college campus.
As a student at the University of California, Davis, I know a thing or two about the rural college town life. Drive 5 minutes in any direction from our campus and you are likely to wind up in a field. There are about as many cows as first year. It’s easy to feel like no body is listening when you’re trying to protest inequalities on campus. But never fear! Use these tips as an outline for your feminist activism, and let me know if you have any more!

1. Unite Women Across Campus- In a rural town, there may not be many female icons nearby to draw upon for inspiration. It’s important to unite the women on campus because they are your only resources!
Make sure you address the concerns of women from diverse social and educational backgrounds. In a small rural community, diversity may seem hard to come by. Make sure to celebrate the voices that are not often heard and the faces that you do not normally see on campus.
Take the time to appreciate women who are role models in the community; this will inspire others to achieve locally as well.

2. Think Local- In the small college town environment, students have a say in what happens off campus as well as on. If there are city policies that your group opposes, approach city officials or attend a city council meeting and voice your concerns. Work with community members to achieve your larger goals, and make sure you get feminist students registered to vote in your area!
Also, work with the local business association to address problems with stores in town and to find great co-sponsors for events. Find a listing of female owned businesses and celebrate them, or campaign for local stores to have gender-neutral restrooms!

3. Provide Entertainment- In towns where there’s not much happening, people want to attend events that are fun! Concerts, movie screenings, and dance parties are great ideas for fundraising or awareness building, and are sure to be packed.
Collaborating on an event with another student group will increase your resources and publicity. Work with other progressive groups, or break barriers in ways no one would have ever expected. If it feels like you are the only progressive group on campus, hold a debate!

4. Connect with (Secret) Feminist Campus- Again, with a lack of feminist inspiration to draw from in the community, it’s important to take advantage of whatever resources are available to you. Try to reach beyond the Women’s Studies Department (if you have one), and look for women professors in the math and sciences to align with as well.

5. Create a Sense of Community- It is really important to keep your student activist community tight. Sometimes in a rural environment it can begin to feel like you’re the only person who thinks and feels the way you do about political issues. Make sure that you care for one another. When your group is small, it’s important that you all like working with each other so that you can work twice as hard to cover the most ground.

Feminists Against BP

As every day passes with the BP oil spill continuing to gush out thousands and thousands of gallons of toxic waste into our precious oceans I become more and more enraged.

Does BP not recognize or even care that the entire world lives in a watershed, including CEO Tony Hayward? All life forms rely on water to nourish and take care of our basic needs. Yet water continues to be abused all over the world. Often times with little to no regard of the consequences.

One can see where priorities lie when the technology to drill has increased leaps and bounds, but yet oil companies are still using 30 year old technology to clean up spills! In fact over the last 3 years, even though BP has grossed over $58 billion dollars, they have not spent one dime what so ever on oil spill response research!!!

As BP and other sources fight to keep us all in suspense on the actual amount of oil spewing forth from below, estimates are showing that BP may be upchucking as much as 100,000 barrels a day; that's equal to the entire amount of oil that was expelled during the Exxon Valdez oil spill every 2 1/2 days!!! On top of all this the U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman ruled to block President Obama's six month moratorium on deep water drilling. Apparently the biggest oil spill in the history of the world is not worrisome enough to hold off on more plundering of Mother Earth's womb. Drill baby drill right.

We need desperately to get clean and give up our addiction to dirty energy practices and policies. But as Jon Stewart pointed out, our last 8 presidents have all stated this exact thought and yet here we are reliant on oil more than ever before. It's way past time to do something about our dependence on oil. We as activists must demand that our leaders create active change otherwise we'll just continue to hear the mumbling and see no action occurring.

It's easy to think that the problem is too daunting, or that there is nothing we can do to stop this atrocity. Not true! We are strong and powerful people who can create change!! The FMF Choices Campus Leadership Program is currently working on a women and climate change campaign specifically addressing the connection between women and water issues. As Feministing has reported some ingredients in oil are endocrine disruptors, one in particular, Benzene, can cause infertility! We cannot and will not stand for the continuing degradation of our water ways, our precious planet, and our health. We are feminists, and activists and we have the power to raise our voices and demand for clean water.

Take action on your campus by starting a photo campaign, where you and your fellow feminist friends photograph yourselves with signs demanding action regarding water management and send them into your representatives. Or host a screening party for the Sierra Club film "Beyond Oil". Spread the word about the BP protest and get students on your campus to sign the pledge to protest BP as well. Organize a letter campaign and use your voice! If your not in school right now and have time to volunteer check out these options as well.

We can make a difference, so lets get out and there and create the change we want!

It's Good to be an Intern

Hello, my name is Victoria Nichols and this is my second day as an intern for Choices Campus Leadership Program at the Feminist Majority Foundation. I am extremely excited to learn more about the issues facing women and I am looking forward to working with the Feminist Campus Team in effort to advance women’s equality.

I am a recent high school graduate and I will be attending Claremont McKenna College in the fall. I am thinking of majoring in International Relations and will definitely make sure to enroll in some women’s studies classes. I can’t wait to get involved on my college campus as a feminist and work with other students to help make an impact on local and eventually international level.

With this internship I am taking my first steps towards getting more involved in political issues that affect my community. I want to participate and be knowledgeable about world events and I am glad to have the opportunity to be a part of an organization like Feminist Majority which has the power to evoke change in the world.

It is only the second day of my internship and I have already learned so much about feminism. There are so many people out there who are simply unaware of the issues that women face on a daily basis. My goal is to not only make myself more aware but provide others with more information so that more people will join the fight for women’s equality. Looking forward to making an impact this summer!

New Intern on the Block

Hey there, Feminists!

My name is Sara Pressey, and I am a new Campus Choices Intern at the Feminist Majority Foundation! I am excited to share my opinion, knowledge, discoveries and questions with you!

This upcoming academic year, I will be a sophomore at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. I am majoring in Sociology as well as minoring in Gender & Women's Studies and Psychology. At Cal Lutheran, I am very involved in extracurricular activities from clubs and volunteering to working with non-profit organizations. My main leadership roles at Cal Lutheran include being President of our Feminist Majority Foundation affiliate group, Feminism Is; Vice President of our campus' Not For Sale chapter and Secretary to the Gay-Straight Alliance.

My involvement with feminism first began about a year ago. Like many other feminists, I have always held the belief that women and men should be treated equal socially, economically and politically, but I could never really place my beliefs in a specific category. I always thought of feminism as being a movement that happened in the past and primarily focused on women's suffrage. When I took my first sociology class this past school year, my eyes were opened to the many issues that women face today. Armed with my new found knowledge, I immersed myself in feminism-- becoming involved with our campus group, reading books and internet articles, blogging, talking to feminists.

While I am interested in all areas of feminism, my main focus is on violence against women. This area is so important to me because the violence around the world (including the United States!) is often misunderstood, unnoticed, condoned or is not subject to intervention.

Introducing a New FMF Summer Intern!

Hey everybody!My name is Jennifer Halberstadter (but I go by Jen). I am so excited to be interning at the Feminist Majority Foundation in Los Angeles. Not only is this the first blog I've written for FMF, but this is the first blog I've written... ever! Don't worry, this definitely will not be the last. So you all can get to know me a little better, here are some fun facts about me:

1. I will be a senior in high school this fall (so I'm quite a bit younger than the other interns around here).
2. I hope my blogs will provide a fresh perspective from a "younger" point of view and reach out to younger feminists who haven't had as much of an opportunity to study these topics in school yet.
3. My favorite color is purple! It has been for as long as I can remember and I ALWAYS have something purple with me. (As a matter of fact, my bag is purple right now)
4. I love to cook but, more importantly, I love to eat!
5. I was born and raised right here in LA. As much as I love the sunny weather, I can't stay out too long in the sun because I burn easily (it's hard being so fair-skinned in Los Angeles!)
6. I have a passion for photography. I love digital, but I much prefer film. To me, there's nothing quite like taking pictures, processing your own film, and making the prints in a darkroom.
7. I have a tendency to make very bad puns (and find them funny).
8. I look forward to summer every year for my birthday, the beach, and nice weather, but mostly for all the yummy summer fruits (peaches are my favorites).
9. I traveled to Spain last year for a foreign exchange trip and it was amazing. I've always wanted to go to Italy so hopefully that will happen in the not to distant future.
10. Although I haven't had the opportunity to study many feminist issues in school, I am very interested by them and I hope this internship will further educate me so that when I go to college I can study women's issues more in depth.

I look forward to more blogging!
--Jen

"Welcome to Feminist Summer Camp!"

Hello awesome readers! My name is Angelica Gonzalez and for the next ten weeks I will be a Choices Campus Intern here at the FMF office. In the Fall I will be starting my fourth year at the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in Gender & Women's Studies and Sociology. I am so excited to be here and know it will be an amazing experience.

10 things about me:

• I am the president of Berkeley NOW; check out our blog (sorry, had to plug)
• I have a Beatles tattoo on my back
• I am first generation Mexican-American. Or Chicana. Or Latina. Or Mexican. I still haven't decided which one.
• I am obsessed with social media: facebook, twitter, tumblr, blogs, etc.
• My favorite television show is Buffy The Vampire Slayer
• I'm interested in reproductive rights, comprehensive sex ed, and sexual assault, but definitely not limited to them. When I graduate I want to work within these fields.
• Two words: Pop culture!
• I love to knit and crochet. I once knitted a vulva for a feminist art event.
• I don't have a favorite fiction book
• I love Wonder Woman and Catwoman and other female comic book characters.

Day 2 of Feminist Summer Camp

Hello! My name is Emily Kunstler and as one of the brand new Feminist Majority Foundation Choices Campus interns. I am extremely excited to spend the summer at "Feminist Summer Camp." I am a queer feminist who loves reading, sports (surfing, swimming, running, basketball and horseback riding), the ocean, and activism.

A Gender and Queer Studies major, I currently attend Santa Monica College. This summer, I am particularly interested in working on the Reproductive Health, Rights & Justice, Women's Health Care, and Civil Rights for the LGBTQ community.

A few of my favorite books are Female Masculinity by J. Halberstam, Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, Feminism and Pop Culture by Andi Zeisler, The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Nobody Passes by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks, Backlash by Susan Faludi and Queers in History by Keith Stern.

This is What a Feminist Looks Like

Meet Another New FMF Intern!

Hello Internet-world! I'm Eden, a new intern for this lovely summer (despite the all too present June Gloom), and will also be a new contributor to the Choices Campus Blog!

In order to get ourselves better acquainted with one another, I present to you: Ten Random Facts About Me!

1. I am a political science major at UC Berkeley, and although I have attended a fair number of protests, I have yet to purchase a tie-dyed shirt. (Blasphemy!)
2. I am passionate about feminist concerns, particularly reproductive and LGBTQ rights.
3. I love food and probably spend most of my life preparing, consuming, and thinking about food. (The Food Network and various cooking blogs owe me a large chunk of my time!)
4. My life goals include making perfectly baked bread and teaching my parents how to use the karaoke machine.
5. But on a more serious note, my life goals also include informing the public about feminist issues and devoting my time fighting for human rights.
   
6. I am somewhat of a television snob (holding Arrested Development in high regard), but have a huge weakness for "trashy" reality shows (anything that plays on Bravo floats my boat).
7. I am a California native and love my state, though I tend to usually dislike being in the sun, sand, and traffic.
8. One of my favorite aspects of feminism is the confidence that stems from the belief! I have met so many intelligent, confident feminists who all have equally intelligent and confident outlooks on life.
   
9. Although I am passionate about various political issues, I am indecisive about little things, so my favorite color is rainbow.
   
10. I mercilessly abuse using parentheses (really?!).

I look forward to contributing more to this blog in the future!

- Eden

Join our Adopt-a-Clinic Campaign!

It's not news that our comprehensive women's health clinics have been facing an escalated amount of anti-choice harassment and violence. With the election of a pro-choice president, the anti-abortion forces have vowed a "return to the streets" and upped their terrorism, evidenced by the 40 days for life campaign that just ended and the tragic murder of Dr. George Tiller last May. These anti-abortion extremists are creating barriers for women to access reproductive health care services, as if women didn't have enough to worry about in terms of reproductive justice.

To combat their efforts, we are calling on you to make the difference. The CHOICES Campus Leadership Program would like to present its newest campaign. Introducing the Adopt-a-Clinic Campaign! Download the kit here and here.

We are urging you and your feminist group to adopt your local reproductive health clinic. We want your group to be able to provide support for embattled clinics in response to the recent escalation in anti-choice violence and harassment. By adopting your local clinic, you will help improve law enforcement response to anti-abortion harassment, bolster the morale of your clinic and its staff, and bring anti-choice bullies to the attention of your local community.

What does it mean to adopt a clinic? You first start out contacting your local comprehensive women’s health clinic. If you need help, contact your local Campus Organizer. Then you must find out the kind of help the clinic wants. It may be volunteering at the clinic or escorting patients; it depends on what your clinic needs.

Check out the new kit and contact your local clinic today! Show your thanks to the courageous abortion providers who save women’s lives every day. Your support means a lot to them. Contact your Campus Organizer to start the campaign. Call us at 866-444-3652(East Coast) or 866-471-3652 (West Coast).

A small group can make a huge difference. Do your part today!

This article was featured in our April 2010 monthly Choices eZine. Sign up for our alerts to stay up-to-date with the latest feminist news and to receive the monthly eZine!

Australia-2010 Year of Women in Local Government

One of the goals of the Feminist Majority Foundation is to see more women in leadership. At the Feminist Majority, we support progressive female candidates, with goals of furthering women’s rights. Awesome right? Right! So when I heard that Australia named 2010 the year for women in local government I jumped for joy, literally, and decided to cover exactly what they are doing.


You can check out their website here, but basically they are creating an initiative that would fund scholarships, programs, and research to advance women in local government. They are conducting research to further their understanding of why women make up smaller portions of local government.

While this is obviously a fantastic move for women in Australia, and hopefully an influential example for us here, some have spotted flaws in their efforts. Feministing has pointed out that:

“The site's "ambassadors" of the movement are almost all white, with one Aboriginal woman. Second, the government has invested in the idea that the best way to recruit and retain women in local government is to conduct studies.”

I am always somewhat weary of initiatives with the main objective to ‘raise awareness’, with no radical plans for change. We can see throughout women’s history past fantastic initiatives ignored by government.(i.e. National Womens Conference )

However, I think Australia is covering more ground then just awareness. While they are putting money toward developing studies and strategies with the end goal of more women in office (which is rad on its own), they are also awarding scholarships, and creating gender checks and balances for their local councils and workplaces.

The Government's commitment includes: via feministing
- $250,000 for a three-year 50:50 Vision: Councils for Gender Equity program which will audit councils and shires
to determine the status and role of women in leadership roles as well as their participation in the workplace
- $100,000 in scholarship funding to enable senior women in local government to participate in the new Executive
Leadership Program being developed by the Australian Center of Excellence for Local Government and the Australia
and New Zealand School of Government
- $100,000 to improve the collection of data and reporting on the status of women in the local government sector
- $40,000 to the Local Government Managers Australia for their 2010 Management Challenge, which will involve around
130 councils identifying strategies to promote gender equity in their councils.

Altogether I think this is fantastic. Any step toward a more equal world for women is always an A+ in my book, and while all initiatives have flaws, I think this will be a great year for women in Australia.

Go Student Journalism!

As a PR intern, working on the Feminist Majority Foundations Campaign to Expose Fake Clinics, it’s always exciting to see a story about CPCs in a college paper. Not only does it assure me that all the calls I make bugging reporters and editors are not in vain, but the quality of some recent articles has really impressed me.

Being a recent graduate I remember the sleep-deprived days, permanently playing catch up with homework and revision all too well. When you’re a student, it seems, time is always your enemy, so the hours these reporters have put into their investigations deserves some recognition.

Take the recent article in MTSU’s The Sidelines for example; as well as investigating the campaigns website and asking me some great questions, reporter Rozalind Ruth took the time to interview the director of Mufreesboro Pregnancy Support Center, a nurse practitioner from MTSU’s Student Health Services and a community health educator from Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee.

I don’t know how many hours this added up to, but Ruth was clearly dedicated to an in depth study from all sides. After reading her article students would be in no doubt about the pro-life position of Mufreesboro Pregnancy Support Center and know where to go for unbiased advice.

Another great example was the article by Carly Tamborski in the University of Cincinnati’s News Record. She gives a detailed description of how to identify CPC and how to identify a genuine clinic.

Grace Pettygrove of the University of Oregon’s Daily Emerald compared claims about breast cancer risks made by the local CPC with those of the National Cancer Institute. She highlighted student activism against this CPC by interviewing the director of Students for Choice at UO.

Alissa Scheller also interviewed student activists and wrote her article in American’s the Eagle, after personally attending a panel discussion hosted by AU’s Students for Choice.

It’s great when reporters highlight the work of activists. It shows that those who believe in choice are not prepared to allow deception and misinformation to obstruct this right.

As can be expected these articles have provoked in a huge response with comments from all sides of the abortion debate. This is great, the longer an article is discussed; the more students will know that CPC’s are not what they claim to be.

Women who find themselves in a situation of an unintended pregnancy, will no doubt remember reporters who took time out of their busy schedules to make sure they’d know exactly where to go and who to trust.

As the nurse practitioner Ruth interviewed said “… a lot of organizations do have a bias, and that’s not really what our patients need–they need information… (so they can) make an educated decision that’s going to best fit their life.”

Check out our new web page!

Well, the verdict is in, and the campus web team - Val , Emily, Courtney and Alysse - has done it again! Check out the dramatically revitalized FeministCampus.org!

Obviously, we'll be tweaking the finer details of the new site for a while, but we want to know your thoughts. Email us at campusteam@feminist.org.

Jacqueline Sun Joins the FMF Campus Team!

The FMF family is THRILLED(!!!) to announce that Jacqueline Sun will join the Campus Team as a National Campus Organizer in our Los Angeles office!

Jacqueline graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles where she received her B.A. in Sociology and Psychology. At UCLA, Jacqueline was an Alumni Scholar and a volunteer at the LGBT Resource Center. She was also the club president and captain of the Women’s Club Volleyball team at UCLA.

As a publicity intern at Ms. magazine, Jacqueline helped promote many programs at FMF, including the Campaign to Expose Fake Clinics and extensive work on the No on 4 & 8 campaign during the 2008 election.

Welcome, Jacqueline!!

Choices Campus Leadership Interns Kick off the Summer in LA!

Hey Feminists!

Summer has begun here in Southern California, where we have just started our exciting new internships at the Feminist Majority Foundation. There are seven of us so far and ten more to come. We’re already busy at work here in our beautiful workspace.

Yesterday, our first day of orientation, we had the opportunity to meet Kathy Spillar, the Executive Vice President of FMF, who sat down with us for over two hours and described the incredible work the Feminist Majority Foundation is doing and the action campaigns we will be working on this summer. Some of the campaigns we’re excited about are the Campaign to Expose Fake Clinics, the Afghan Women’s Health Initiative and the Global Reproductive Rights Campaign.

We also had the opportunity to meet each other and are excited to work together this summer.

Jenna, a student from Scripps College spent the year studying in Mexico, Senegal and France and is majoring in International Relations and French.

Beau is a student at Harvard, majoring in Human and Evolutionary Biology with a minor in film. She just got back from teaching English in Burkina Faso.

Sierra is a senior at Occidental College and an American Women’s History major.

Jessica just received her BA is Sociology and Studies of Women and Gender from the University of Virginia.

Danae is a senior at Hastings College, studying Communications Studies, Music and Women’s Studies.

Julia just graduated from UCR with degrees in English and Women’s Studies and hopes to go to Loyola University in Chicago for the dual masters degree in Social Work and Women’s Studies program.

Anita Lederer is a senior at Boston College, majoring in History and Political Science.

We look forward to many more blog posts!