Why Obama Won't Be Our Next "Greatest" American President

A few posts ago, I asked how you rate President Obama's leadership on health care reform.

There were some intriguing responses. I said at the time that I most agreed with Jeff Friedman, who replied via Facebook:

As seems to be the case with almost every issue he tackles, his heart is in the right place, but he doesn't seem to have the stomach for a good, old fashioned street fight. And, unfortunately, until he quits trying to be Conciliator-in-Chief and starts to tackle the Republicans and the Blue Cross, I mean the Blue Dog, Democrats head on, most of his positive agenda for the country is going to fall by the wayside. If only he had the stubborn, confrontational approach for his good ideas that George W. Bush had for his horrible ones.

Still, I had the audacity to hope that Obama would gain strength in his new role and become increasingly willing to put forth bold initiatives to solve problems such as the 40 million or so Americans lacking health insurance and many millions more teetering on the brink of losing it along with their jobs or being so

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Courageous Leadership Transition at the Women's Media Center

As a board member of the Women's Media Center, I'm delighted to share this announcement of a very positive passing of the torch, or more properly increasing the number of torches lighting the way to making women visible and powerful in the media: a tribute to the founding president Carol Jenkins and a warm welcome to incoming president Jehmy Greene. Here's the press release that just went out.
 

It is with great pleasure that we announce to you that Progressive Women's Voices alum Jehmu Greene has been selected as the next president of The Women's Media Center. She brings great expertise in feminist/progressive organizing and media -- and she is, we believe, the perfect woman for the organization's next stages of development.  We are sharing this announcement with you before our public announcement

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Convictions to Action: Margaret Sanger’s Legacy and Leadership Lessons

Folks have asked me to post this speech that I gave at the Brooklyn Museum Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art on September 13. Today, September 14, would be the 130th birthday of the founder of the American Birth Control Movement, Margaret Sanger. So here you go!

I just got back from my high school reunion in West Texas. It was a long journey from teen mom with little sense of power over or intention for my life to a movement leader and an activist for women’s human right to reproductive self-determination.

So when I tell you I’m amazed to be here with you, so near 46 Amboy Street in Brownsville, where Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic 93 years ago next month—believe it! This is hallowed ground.

Would the girl born Margaret Higgins in Corning NY in 1879, the sixth child of eleven living siblings, have imagined she’d be immortalized by Judy Chicago's Dinner Party as a flaming red vulva here in the Brooklyn Museum?

Maybe! 

The first leadership lesson I learned from the founder of the birth control movement is:   All worthwhile accomplishments start with a vision. Not a small, incremental vision, but a bold, audacious, flaming red, bigger than yourself vision.

I’ve often turned to Margaret Sanger for inspiration, courage, and practical examples

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Margaret Sanger's Leadership Lessons for Today

Who inspires you as a leader?

So often during my 30 years with Planned Parenthood and since as an activist author and speaker, I've turned to stories about Margaret Sanger for inspiration and encouragement when I've faced tough challenges. What must it have been like for her when she started out, with little money, at a time when birth control and even Here's Margaret looking happy as a clam while being arraigned on charges of providing birth control to women--she knew it was an opportunity to build public sentiment for her cause.dispensing information about it was illegal?

But if, as I believe firmly, a leader is someone who gets things done, then Margaret (having worn her mantle, I feel we're on a first-name basis) was a leader par excellence. She founded the movement to bring birth control to American women and the organization that today is called Planned Parenthood.

"We must put our convictions into action," she was fond of saying.

That's why I'm looking forward with such great excitement to speaking at the Brooklyn Museum on Sunday, September 13, at 2pm on "Margaret Sanger's Legacy and Leadership Lessons for Today." It's the perfect date, because September 14 is the birthday of this visionary leader. And the museum is the perfect location too, since her first birth control clinic was opened in Brooklyn in 1916--you can read that story as I wrote it for the New York Times.

I'll get to tell several of my favorite stories about Margaret's life and work, the history of the birth-control movement, the role that birth control plays in women's equality and empowerment, and what activists and other leaders today can learn from Sanger.

By the way, Margaret Sanger is a featured guest in The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. Be sure to take a look at that fantastic installation while you are at the museum. Her plate fittingly is graced with fiery red female genitalia.

The lecture will be in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Forum, on the 4th floor. I hope you'll join me.

 

Leader's Moment of Decision Led to Women's Equality Day

Leaders make decisions every day, but some days are more significant than others. Those are the days on which we face moments of decision at the moral crossroads. One such crossroads was the reason we celebrate August 26 as Women's Equality Day.

Why August 26? It's the date that the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

After 72 years of organized struggle, and almost 150 years after the American Revolution took place, female citizens of this country finally got the right to vote. But though this decision was clearly about women, it must be remembered that the women who led the suffrage movement had to persuade the virtually all male Congress and state legislatures to expand the franchise

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