WBAI CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, IN A CONVERGENCE OF SONG, STRUGGLE AND SOLIDARITY
TUNE IN THIS SATURDAY, MARCH 8TH FROM 3PM TO 10PM, AND JOIN US FOR A GATHERING OF WOMEN HOSTS AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS, PERFORMERS, ARTISTS, POETS AND STORYTELLERS
New York, NY – International Women's Day 2014 on WBAI Radio is hosted this year by Mary Ann Miller, From The Women's Desk.
**Opening Ceremony: Mary Ann Miller, Kathryn Davis, Lorraine Currelley of The Harlem Arts Fund, Writing For Peace and Pearls of Wisdom Storytellers, and Cynthia Parsons McDaniel presenting 'The Least Known Actress In The World.'
**US Representative for New York's 12th congressional district Carolyn Maloney. In a phone conversation with Mary Ann Miller, to speak about her plans to re-introduce Equal Rights Amendment legislation.
**Andrea Katz with WBAI intern Aurelie Diese. Hosting a segment on the state of affairs of feminism, as well as cultural demands on ethnic communities of younger women. Several guests will call in from the Barnard Research Center on women, along with an African American female artist whose work deals with these issues, and representatives from the younger Moslem community.
**Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi. The NYC based Italian, artist, will discuss her current exhibit Material Puns, at the International Fine Arts Consortium in NY.
**Naomi Brussel, co-host of Out-FM. In a conversation about lesbians in the Philippines, and same sex adoption issues.
**Heart Of Mind host Kathryn Davis. A segment about the plight of young black women today.
**Medea Benjamin of CodePink, just returned from Egypt. Where she was imprisoned and brutalized by Cairo police on her way to join a delegation traveling to Gaza in Palestine for a women’s conference. She is expected to phone in.
**West Coast Poets On The Air
*Judy Juanita: Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, Painted Bride Quarterly, Lips, Crab Orchard Review, Croton Review and Obsidian II. Her plays have been produced in Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, LA, and NYC. Juanita's first novel was Virgin Soul, a coming of age story whose protagonist joins the Black Panther Party in the sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her collection of essays, Labyrinthine: Essays On Becoming A Novelist, was published last month by EQD Press in Oakland.
*Lynne Bronstein: She is a writer, journalist, and poet who lives in Santa Monica, and writes about social consciousness, sisterhood and sexuality. Her books include Border Crossings, Thirsty In The Ocean, Roughage, and Astray From Normalcy. Bronstein has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2014.
*Julia Stein: An LA fiction writer and poet, Stein has published seven books of poetry. Her latest collection is What Were They Like, about
bringing peace after ten years of wars. She will be reading poems from Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Fire Poetry, in honor of the 102nd anniversary of the worker tragedy.
*Karen Kevorkian: She is a fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous magazines. Including Antioch Review, Fiction International, 5 Fingers Review, Hambone, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, Rio Grande Review, River City Review, Third Coast, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
*Carol Dorf: She is poetry editor of Talking Writing, whose most recent issue honors Muriel Rukeyser. She also teaches mathematics at Berkeley High School. Dorf's poetry has been published in Spillway, Sin Fronteras, The Mom Egg, Composite, Occupy SF, Fringe, About Place, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, Maintenant, OVS, Best of Indie Lit New England, and elsewhere.
Keiko Amano: She states, 'I have been writing since my mother died in 1996. Growing up, she forced me to practice the traditional art, Ocha (tea ceremony), but I rebelled against it and all the outmoded boring Japanese customs. My first memoir revolves around this major conflict between Mother and me starting in 1957 in Yokohoma, Japan.' Amano will read from her work, The Immediate Theater.
**Performing artist Elizabeth Ruf Maldonado. Presenting a feature segment about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and Occupy Wall Street. Including dramatizations of a monologue by Clara Lemlich organizing the young workers, and as a Wall Street Occupier singing the OWS anthem, Guitarmy. Which Maldonado wrote as a tribute to the Triangle martyrs and Pete Seeger. The phoenix rises from the ashes.
****Earth Mum interviews Pearl Means. Widow of the late Native American rights activist, Russell Means.
**Closing Remarks: Janet Coleman of Cat Radio Cafe.
4 comments:
Women's Day seems to celebrated at different levels in Western Europe. There is a growing awareness of it in the U.K and in Austria it appears to be much more ingrained into the national psyche, or, maybe, to be more correct, (though not researched) into the psyche of the younger age groups who cluster in the cities. This latter thought, may apply to many other areas in this part of the globe.
There is without doubt, an awareness of the celebration of women. I think it is a signpost to the fact that men are so globally dominant that women have to assert that they exist, that they have abilities and must be accorded the recognition and respect that is sadly missing otherwise.
The celebration for and of women is non existent in vast regions of this planet. I fervently wish that the celebrations of women, even just one day a year, will lead to little benefits in the closed societies we know about.
ZACL,
Thank you for your kind and strong comment. It was beneficial for me to have joined the reading. On the broadcast, a congress woman said that equal right bills have been introduced many times but has never been passed. I don't know the detail, but I thought it odd.
It's a coincidence that yesterday, I was reading a discussion between two Japanese history scholars and found out that women in Kanto area (Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa(Yokohama included) had a new religious movement in the Edo period.
They fought for their rights and flourished. I think they combined their belief with Mt.Fuji mythology. Their belief was that women and men switch their roles. So women work and men take care of babies.
Amino Yoshihiko, a prominent Japanese history scholar, said that women in the Kanto Plain became stronger at the time of silk export demands. He specifically pointed to Joshu (Gunma prefecture). That's where my grand mother was born on my mother's side. In silk productions, women excelled in those days, so I guess quite many became economically independent.
I uploaded my grandmother's wedding photo before, and in it, the most powerful woman of the family appeared next to my great grandfather. I think she was the CEO of their business. She surely doesn't look like a subservient, helpless woman. I wanted to paste the link here, but right now I can't find it.
Although my grandmother wasn't a strong enough woman to survive, but I'm glad there were some strong women in my family. I think both kinds of women in me drives me to write.
What you have discovered amongst your female ancestors, Keiko, is, the reality that intelligent, strong, powerful women do not often receive acknowledgement by historians of the true level of the contributions they made to the development and knowledge in our societies.
Sure, there is Marie Curie, there was a 19th century Chinese Empress who set the modernisation of China in train, We have a couple of Queens in English history who have been accorded respectful and powerful records; Beatrix Potter is known for her children's stories and books, her drawings of the natural environment that she observed, her discoveries of plant development, were totally ignored by the important scientific societies of the time, because she was a woman. Potter's findings waited for a man to 'discover' them much later. Classical music is another area where female talent was suppressed.
Let's hope there will be equal acceptance of the abilities of both genders in their own right. Education is the key.
Yes, I completely agree with you, ZACL. Education is the key. All prejudices come from ignorance.
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