Viva la Feminista

La verdad, mujeres? This almost didn't happen. It's been a tough year for this feminista. I have another summer project in mind and was going to let this fall away quietly. Then I attended the Top Bloguera Retreat and one bloguera asked what this summer's theme would be. Then I received a tweet from another feminista. I looked up at the Goddess and said, "Ay, I hear you!" So here we are. Drum roll please!..... The theme for this summer is simple. Election 2012. Prompts to choose from: a. As a feminist and/or Latina, what key issues are you following? What does President Obama or Gov. Mitt Romney have to do or say to earn your vote? b. What are you doing to get Latinas registered and to the polls in November? I know this is biased towards Latinas who can vote and I know there are many out there who cannot vote for many reasons. I want to hear from you too. Address this anyway you want: If you could vote, what you could say to those of us who can vote, ...

DiálogoEcológico De los Redactores de E/La Revista Ecológica Querido DiálogoEcológico : He visto bastantes anuncios celebratorios en televisión, muchos patrocinados por British Petroleum (BP), instándome a ir de vacaciones en el Golfo de México. ¿Pero han vuelto las cosas realmente “a la normalidad?”                      -- Paul Shea, Dublín, OH El Golfo de México puede estar abierto para el comercio y ansioso de atraer turistas, pero todavía no está claro si los ecosistemas marinos y costeros son sanos dos años después de la explosión del aparejo de perforación de BP a 40 millas de la costa de Luisiana, dejando escapar al final 205,8 millones de galones de petróleo en la columna de agua. Cinco meses después del desastre de abril de 2010 la administración de Obama publicó un plan detallado de recuperación, invocando una inversión de hasta $21 mil millones—cuya ma...

So I will sum up. 1) I'm headed to DC as one of the top Blogueras for the first ever LATISM Latina retreat. Monday we head to the White House for a briefing with administration officials to discuss issues concerning Latinas. I'll be sure to report on all the happenings over Twitter and Facebook. I'm not sure if I can live blog from my tablet, but we'll see. 2) I entered the Good Maker competition to speak at the TedxUChicago 2013 gathering. I need your vote! Thankfully you can only vote once, so no need to go back every day. It's been a whirlwind around here! Hope to catch you up when I return.

Disclaimer: I began this post in August 2011 and with the flurry of activity that is graduate school, I just now completed this thought. Any datedness is my fault, not the fault of my awesome friends who contributed their voices to this conversation. ~veronica Photo from The New Yorker profile One day over the summer I realized that Sheryl Sandberg had taken over my inbox. I had press releases about her TED talk and her Barnard commencement address , with pleas to blog about them. Then came emails about a profile in The New Yorker . People wanted me to know about her and friends wanted to know what I thought of her. Is she a feminist? Is her advice feminist? Should we be playing her TED talk to every woman and girl? Finally my curiosity took over. I dove into the pool that is Sheryl Sandberg. And I jumped right back out. My mind was spinning and I wasn’t sure what to think. This is where I usually email a friend or two to talk it out. Maybe start a conversation on Faceboo...

EarthTalk ® E - The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: What is the “Fair Trade Your Supermarket” campaign? -- Brian Howley, Washington, DC A project of the non-profit Green America, the “Fair Trade Your Supermarket” campaign aims to empower consumers to advocate for more “Fair Trade” products on store shelves at their local supermarkets. Fair trade is a system of exchange that honors producers, communities and the environment by ensuring that farmers and artisans throughout the developing world are paid fair prices for their work and have direct involvement in the marketplace. The goal of the wider Fair Trade movement, according to Green America, is to build real and lasting relationships between producers in developing countries and businesses and consumers around the world. And that’s where your neighborhood grocer comes in. “While the Fair Trade movement is gaining steam nationwide, most of our supermarkets still carry few–if any–Fair Trade products on their shelves,” re...

CALL FOR PAPERS Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement  (MIRCI) ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM ON ADRIENNE RICH October 20, 2012, Toronto, Ontario, Canada In celebration of the life and work of Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) Poet, Essayist, Radical Feminist, Anti- War Activist, Mothering Theorist, and Author of Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience. We welcome submissions from scholars, students, activists, workers, artists, and others inspired by the work of Adrienne Rich. Cross-cultural, historical and comparative work is encouraged. We are open to a variety of types of submissions, such as: academic papers from all disciplines; presentations by community activists and social service providers; creative submissions - performances, films, storytelling, visual arts; and workshops.    Please send a 250-word abstract and 50-word bio to aoreilly@yorku.ca by July 1, 2012. One must ...

See the woman jumping? That's one my new friends, Tantoo Cardinal , practicing for the all-aboriginal "King Lear," which opens this Friday at Canada's National Arts Centre . We met on the NWI delegation in January. She talked about this production and was so excited. I wish I could make it up to see it! But if you are in Ottawa, please try to see it...for me! It's getting some great press about the boundaries this production is crossing: For decades, Schellenberg was told there simply weren't enough working aboriginal actors to pull off the Lear of his dreams. In 2012, however, director Peter Hinton has been able to assemble not just an all-aboriginal but an all-star team to bring Shakespeare's greatest tragedy to life. How many times have people of color heard that "there's just not enough of you to do X" ? It takes time and a lot of effort, but eventually dreams are achieved such as this one. It's a grand achievement on man...

I am proud to announce a new partner for Viva la Feminista! Each week, if the story fits, I'll be sharing the latest EarthTalk column from E Magazine . Environmental issues are definitely feminist issues and even more so feminist mom issues. I felt this way for many years and even felt more connected to the environmental movement before the feminist movement. However, after my trip to Guatemala in January, I am even more certain that what happens to the Earth is an issue for feminists to pay attention to. With that in mind, I present the first in the columns and it hits far too close to home. GREEN CLOUD COMPUTING! OMG, I practically live on the cloud, especially when working with classmates. But read on...Oh! All columns will be in English and Espanol! I hope you enjoy this addition to Viva la Feminista. ~The management EarthTalk ® E - The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: Why is Greenpeace upset with some leading tech companies for so-called “dirty cloud computing?” ...