Des Moines News: Women’s March, Candidate Questions, Feisty Women

Pictured are six of the WILPF members who attended the Women’s March on January 19, 2019. In the front row from left are Mary Ann Koch, a Local2Global honoree, and Des Moines Leadership Team member, and Eloise Cranke, an honoree of our Strong Feisty Women Award to be held in February. The back row, from left:  Jan Corderman, WILPF Des Moines leadership and WILPF-US Treasurer; Mary Caponi, WILPF Des Moines Leadership and also a Local2Global honoree, Linda Lemons, WILPF Des Moines leadership, and Patti McKee, WILPF member and the director of Catholic Peace Ministries.

By Linda Lemons
Des Moines Branch Leadership Team

Eleven WILPF Des Moines Members joined with the 1,000 women who attended the Women’s March, held in our state capital on Saturday, January 19th. The weather moved the "march" inside our State Capitol where, unfortunately, we are not allowed to carry signs on sticks.

We were honored with wonderful speakers. Christine Nobiss, whom we have invited to speak at a future meeting, spoke on behalf of the Indigenous People and the historical trauma they experience, a white privileged social construct created for Indigenous People, and how that culture must change. Other speakers spoke to advance the rights of LGTBQI, on migrant justice, and on gender justice. We are hoping to build relationships with the organizers of the Iowa Event, and to obtain the names and organizations of all of the speakers, so that we can become good allies in creating change.

We were also honored to hear from one of our newly elected female US House of Representatives, Cindy Axne. She had just returned from being in Washington, DC, where she had experienced first-hand its current dysfunction. She said that she maintains hope as she sees so many women coming together to stand for the human rights of all people.

As Iowa continues to be the first state in the nation to host our caucus and share our voice regarding whom we support for president, we are starting to hear from presidential candidates. Kirsten Gillibrand gave a rallying speech advocating for human rights, and calling for values on which Americans can build a foundation for peace and justice.
 
Moving forward, we are getting prepared for our off-year caucuses by preparing our resolutions, and inviting people to attend. We are also preparing our questions to ask candidates who will be visiting Iowa this coming year. We hope other WILPF members from other branches will also send us their questions.  

On February 22, we will honor three Feisty Women at our 9th Strong Feisty Women Event. The first is Eloise Crank, a strong advocate for human rights and peace in our community, the second is Marti Anderson, who is a state representative, and the third is Cathy Glasson, who ran for State Governor based on the approach of what we are calling “movement politics.”