NEWS

Christine Ahn, the founder and international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ.

By the ONE WILPF Call Team

Members of our WILPF US leadership team met with Women Cross DMZ leaders in March in San Francisco.  Now it’s time to follow up and explore how we might forge a stronger strategy for peacework collaboration in the future.

On the next ONE WILPF Call on Thursday, June 13th, we will hear from the Women Cross DMZ founder and International Coordinator. Be part of this discussion with Women Cross DMZ leader Christine Ahn to learn what they’ve got planned and how our work might amplify theirs.

More details will follow. Mark your calendars today:   
Thursday, June 13th – 4 pm pacific, 5 pm mountain, 6 pm central, 7 pm eastern.
 
Pre-registration is Required

Just click here to register.  

You can call in with only your phone, or using both your phone and your computer for a fuller communication experience.  
All voices will be muted during the general part of the call and open during Break Out Rooms.
PRESS 5 on your PHONE keypad if you have any technical problems.
PRESS 1 on your PHONE keypad during Q&A to raise your hand and get on the stack, or to vote in real time polls.

By Michael Ippolito
WILPF US National Communications Coordinator

Mark your calendars for the upcoming Technology Training Call Dates:  June 10th & 17th
 
These calls are always on Mondays at 8 pm EST, 5 pm PST. You can register by clicking here.

These trainings usually take place one to three times a month on Mondays. Once you are registered you will regularly get the reminders 24 hours & 2 hours before each call. Also keep an eye on the monthly eNews for upcoming dates, or find them at the registration page.

The trainings can be customized to cover what you, personally, are looking to get out of them.  You are encouraged to please email Michael@TeamGood.org in advance about what you would like to get out of the trainings or to simply say you will be on the call. Depending on how many people come to the calls, we try to have more trainers and create groups that are leveled to create the best learning experience for you.

There are typically 2-3 trainers on these calls. Each training usually goes 20-25 minutes, so on just one training call you will have the opportunity to take part in as many as four different trainings. If you prefer, you can stay in one training for the duration of the call. We work to customize the trainings for the people who attend them and to focus on the needs of the participants.

Topics covered include (but are not limited to) the following: Using Facebook & Twitter as well as a technology called Slack, the Maestro call interface (social webinar), and general technology questions. WILPF US also has accounts on Pintrest and MediaRevolt.org which we will be glad to show you how to utilize.

Any questions about the trainings, technology in general, or the other social media platforms, please email michael@teamgood.org and/or fellow WILPFer julie@teamgood.org. Julie is one of the regular trainers on these calls. 

Participate in the Weekly WILPF Twitter Wednesdays!

Also offered are fun weekly actions on Wednesdays where you get to meet & casually talk with other WILPFers.You are invited to participate in these weekly Twitter Wednesdays. Upcoming dates: June 5, 12, 19, & 26

Each Wednesday for the last year and a half, WILPFers from around the country have been gathering at 7 pm EST & 4 pm PST to amplify the messages of WILPF US while getting to know one another on our weekly Twitter calls. You can register for the calls by clicking here.

If you do not have a Twitter account we will help you create one on the spot! Once you have a Twitter account, the process is very easy. As many WILPFers who have participated in the actions have remarked, “The environment is a lot like stuffing envelopes around a table.”

We welcome branches that are working on specific issues or national issue committees to message Michael@TeamGood.org if you’d like us to plan having your issue be what we Tweet about in a future Twitter call. This will provide you with the opportunity to invite your branch members or issue committee members to join us to further magnify the message.

Each person that joins the call and tweets with us means thousands more people will see our content on social media. This is due to each tweet reaching on average thirty people. We tweet out at least two hundred tweets in a night and sometimes as many as three hundred! This means that up to nine thousand people will see our message per each WILPFer on the call! So when we have twenty people on these calls, we can accumulate as many as one hundred thousand people seeing our content.
 
Help WILPF US amplify our messages by joining the Wednesday Twitter calls!

You don't have to come every week and it is OK if you can only stay for a portion of the call.

These calls are also an excellent opportunity for inviting family and friends to join in an easy and fun action.

Please consider these calls as a tool for recruiting in addition to magnifying the message of the important issues you are all working on as part of WILPF US.  

WILPF US shared an ad in the Young Feminist Leadership Conference Program Book, the next step in a fruitful collaboration that has led to a series of articles in Ms. Magazine called “Women Unscrewing Screwnomics.” This series could help raise WILPF’s profile and impact us in other positive ways.

By Marybeth Gardam
Chair, Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee
 
Women, emerging feminist leaders, an economy that finally works for women, and WILPF…. it’s all coming together.

The collaboration between the WILPF US Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee and Screwnomics author Rickey Gard Diamond brought us an invitation to partner with the Young Feminist Leadership Conference, held March 9-11, 2019 in the Washington, DC area, co-sponsored by Ms. Magazine.  

Rickey never fails to mention and promote WILPF at all her book tour stops. And she has been including us in strategic connections she’s making with the New Economy Coalition, a dynamic collection of folks dedicated to advocating for an economic system that works for all of us.

“By focusing on voices not typically part of mainstream man-to-man economic discourse, the articles will mainstream news of hopeful and practical changes already underway, celebrating an economy waged as life, not as war.”
        —Rickey Gard Diamond, Screwnomics author and WILPF US partner

Recently Rickey successfully pitched an idea for a series of articles in Ms. Magazine called “Women Unscrewing Screwnomics,” about the sheroes who are working nationally and internationally to create a fairer economy for women and families. Each article includes WILPF in the byline, as Rickey continues to keep us front and center in her presentations around the country.

**We’ll keep members updated by featuring the articles from Ms. on our website.**

How Can You Take Advantage of the National Publicity?

Plan NOW to start a “Women Unscewing Screwnomics” group in your community  with WILPF leading the discussion to focus on local solutions.

“Women Unscewing Screwnomics” is being piloted in WILPF’s St. Louis Branch. Branch leader Lynn Sableman says they are using it as a way to connect with new allies and collaborators in their community, as well as to engage a new segment of women who are learning how economics and peace are connected. They’re planning for a bookstore visit to the area by Rickey, and using it to promote continued discussion groups.
 
If you or your branch want more information about how to launch and promote a Screwnomics  group in your area, contact us at mbgardam@gmail.com.  

WILPF women understand the deep connection between economic injustice and the funding and promotion of more conflict and war. Screwnomics helps ordinary women not yet aware of that connection to see how the pressure they are feeling on Main Street has everything to do with the decisions made on Wall Street, and the men who call the shots.

Let’s take advantage of the national publicity we’re getting through this series of articles tying peace and economic justice to WILPF.   

The Women’s Building in San Francisco, where the Women’s Peace Initiative met in March. Photo by Cherrill Spencer.

By Odile Hugonot Haber

On March 22, 2019, five women’s peace organizations including WILPF US met in San Francisco to discuss how we might collaborate, learn from each other, and support one another.

WILPF US participated in the Women’s Peace Initiative, a conference of five women’s peace organizations in San Francisco. Eighteen women from three organizations — and joined later by two more — met in the Women’s Building (see photo) on March 22, 2019. The Peace Development Fund, the fiscal sponsor for the three groups, convened the conference, explaining that it has become harder for one organization alone to qualify for grants; foundations are now looking for multi-group campaigns and coalition work.

The WILPF US conference delegation included Darien De Lu, Nancy Price, Shilpa Pandey, Setou Ouattara, and me, Odile Hugonot Haber. Our delegation met first with Women Cross DMZ and Women for Genuine Security.

Women Cross DMZ is women gathered for peace and reunification through demilitarization of Korea. They also promote women’s leadership and action. With WILPF International, they are launching a major 2020 campaign for the inclusion of women in the Korean peace process and a Korea peace treaty. Christine Ahn, the founder, told us that it was through a vivid dream that she was inspired to start Women Cross DMZ.

The group gained public attention on May 24, 2015, when they organized a group including two Nobel prize-winning women peace activists, WILPF International members, and other international activists to cross the north-south Korean border, reuniting families across the divide.    

Women for Genuine Security is a US-based organization that promotes security based on justice and respect for others across national boundaries. Through educational programs and resources, they seek a world free of militarism, violence, and all forms of sexual exploitations. Founder Gwyn Kirk and three other members attended the Women’s Peace Initiative.

We discussed our organizations and their strengths and weaknesses. For instance, WILPF’s strength is our many sections and branches, while the strength of Women Cross DMZ is their very savvy media campaign, at a time when global attention is focused on Korea. Women for Genuine Security promotes critical analysis and activist partnerships, such as with the International Women’s Network Against Militarism, an Asian network that focuses on the harmful effects of US bases, military budgets, and military operations.

All these organizations could be stronger by maintaining relationships and supporting each other, both in solidarity and as part of the common context of struggle. We looked at the importance of doing media work, being multilingual in a global world, and involving young women in the leadership of our organizations.

In the afternoon we met with two other groups: The Heart and Hand Fund, and Whose Knowledge? The Heart and Hand Fund supports feminist women activists in the Balkans: “We tend to fund groups that are inclusive and working with women from all the varied ethnic groups in their region.”

Whose Knowledge? aims to correct the skewed representations on the internet, by making content less male, straight, white, and global North in origin, It is a global multilingual campaign to create knowledge more representative of the global South.

In their guide, they explain the importance of “allyship”:

We come to allyship with preconceived notions, expectations, habits, and biases. It is not until we engage in the messy work of allying with marginalized people that some of our biases are revealed, and we may feel embarrassed. More importantly, though, we may learn that our biases have an impact: they hurt or harm those we are trying to support.

The conference concluded with examining Sweden’s feminist foreign policy, which seeks to promote gender equality in all of their departments in order to influence foreign policy by making a revolution from inside out. We were reminded by Setou that countries like Nigeria or Ghana do not have a “foreign policy,” so the concept itself implies an imperialist policy. Still, it was impressive that the whole Swedish State Department, a governmental institution, was working to change policies on harassment, abuse, and other forms of human rights violations.

WILPF International has published a report, “Towards a Feminist Security Council,” which provides concrete recommendations.

We hope to build on this first initial meeting with projects in different areas, such as a tour to some of our branches with a Korean grassroots member of Women Cross DMZ, while they could help us with media. Cooperation could help them grow and help make WILPF more visible.

As Kathy Sharkey of the Peace Development Fund concluded: “We will collaborate and continue the conversations,…sharing tools and skills, offering publicity to each other’s work, connecting our activism to new audiences.”  

The gathering was very fruitful, and we look forward to the next carefully planned steps toward further cooperation for peace.