That’s partly because I have a large number of old posts in draft form which I managed to rescue when the site died a while back. Rebooting them is satisfying but also frustrating, as they need all new links and the original pictures are gone.

The other reason is because I’ve been bloggin’ elsewhere on the interweb. I thought it might be good to sling up a post linking to some of the things I’ve been doing elsewhere. Just to prove I’ve not just been twiddling my thumbs since xmas.

Women’s History Month

Where are women in the history of art?

An article commissioned by WHM following a massive rant of mine on Twitter about women and art (prompted by a stupid comment in a documentary from Howard Jacobson) It turned out to be a great excuse to revisit a load of essays I had to read on the hop during my degree.

Bad Reputation

I’m part of the Bad Rep team so trying to turn in posts for them regularly. These are some of my favourites, but you should really go and read everyone else’s posts too.

• The Hearing Trumpet: Surrealism and Old Lady Revolt
• What Does Feminism Look Like?
• Why Are Trending Topic #Hashtags so Sexist?
• Reproductive Justice in the UK
• Battle Angel Alita and Cyborg Feminism

Womankind Worldwide

Where are women’s voices in the land rush debate?

My first proper blog post in my new job, it’s so fascinating learning about the global women’s movement, and about time I broadened my perspective out from the UK.

Farewell from Education For Choice

By Education For Choice | 30 April 2010, 17:30

I’ve lobbied my MP, I’ve waved placards, I’ve donated money. I’ve argued with my friends, my colleagues, with strangers. I’ve shouted into a megaphone. On one memorable occasion I carried a flaming torch around Bloomsbury. I’ll go a long way to defend the principle of a woman’s right to choose. But until I joined the trustee board of Education For Choice I confess I hadn’t given enough thought to exactly who was making the choice, and what the reality of their situation might be like.

One of the things that first appealed to me about EFC was the fact that all their work is grounded in the experiences of the young people they talk to. They speak with absolute authority when they say, as Kate did in her post a couple weeks ago, that much of the information young people receive about abortion is little better than anti-abortion propaganda. Not just partial, not just biased, not just alarming and distressing, but outright lies.

I didn’t know the extent of it. My school sex education was laughable, but we never had any outside visitors stop by to show us horrific photographs (and for that I am thankful as it would have made my job as the only feminist in the village even more difficult). Learning about EFC was the first time I really understood how hard it must be for young women to make choices about pregnancy and abortion, perhaps without support, and in many cases without the facts.

Education For Choice works to ensure that young people can access the information that is theirs by right, and make informed choices about pregnancy and abortion. By directly providing vital facts and resources to fight the frightening myths spread by the anti-abortion movement, they make a real difference to the lives of women and girls across the country.

And I mean ‘across the country’: EFC staff regularly trek around England providing training to equip teachers and other professionals with the practical advice and resources they need to have an open, balanced discussion about sex, pregnancy and abortion, and to allow young people to make up their own minds.

It would be nice if we didn’t have to fight for decent sex education, support for all pregnancy choices and free access to safe abortion every single decade, but that doesn’t look like changing any time soon. After recent talk of cutting the late term abortion time limit, we’ll be hearing a lot more about abortion during and possibly after the election. Rest assured you’ll be hearing a lot more from Education For Choice as well.

The EFC staff blogging here might not want to ask you for money, but a good trustee should also be a shameless fundraiser, so I *will* ask for your support. Education For Choice reaches thousands of young people every year on a shoestring budget, and anything you can give will help to make sure young people across the UK have the facts about abortion. You can make a donation online here.

This is the end of EFC’s month as guest bloggers. Thank you for having us – we’ve really enjoyed it, and we hope you’ll stay in touch. If you’d like more information about our work, or you’d like to get involved, please email Kate at kate [at] efc.org.uk. Also keep your eyes peeled for a notice about EFC’s brand new, very own blog, to be launched soon!

Sarah Jackson is a trustee of Education For Choice.

Liberty conducted a ComRes poll in December and found this startling result: the British public support human rights. 96% believe it is important that there is a law that protects rights and freedoms in Britain. However only 11% of respondents remember receiving or seeing any information from the Government about the law that does (source).

Our campaign aims to increase understanding and respect for human rights values, and to give people a chance to learn about the Human Rights Act and what it means for them. Please help us by sharing the link www.love.commonvalues.org.uk as widely as you can, with your friends, colleagues and networks, and share the love for our Human Rights Act.

A positive call to action

Rather than dwelling on the problems, these campaigns assume we know them already, and focus on getting us involved in solving them.

This is exactly what Oxfam’s Be Humankind ad campaign launched with last year, through a series of colourful billboards featuring thought-provoking slogans like “Get rich quick. Give”, and a short animation that focused on the world-changing power of ordinary people. The warm and fuzzy message of the film was nicely balanced by a bit of creepy animation, although I wasn’t very keen on the oral Care Bear stare at the end. I get the symbolism, but I don’t want to vanquish injustice by vomiting freedom. Can I be empowered in a less gross way, please? Thanks.

Christian Aid’s current Poverty Over campaign makes a similar appeal based on our power to improve the world, a power which is rooted in our humanness. They add a compelling twist to the message – poverty is a problem we created, so we can end it. It does help to make their goal seem more achievable, but it’s also an unfortunate reminder that if humans weren’t so powerful there’d be a whole lot less mess to clean up now. The campaign challenges people to explain why ending poverty is impossible and then counters them with reasons why it isn’t. This is a deft bit of supporter engagement, drawing people into the debate, and radiating confidence.

Words not pictures

By using typography and simple graphics rather than photos, these campaigns can make a case for common humanity but bypass the sentimentality of the ‘holding hands around the globe’ photographic oeuvre. Watch this quietly inspiring little animation about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s simple, inclusive and positive, without being sickly. There’s not a human face in sight, and no soaring strings in the background – it lets the words do the work.

It is impossible to represent humankind with two or three faces, and as soon as a campaign includes an image of a person it becomes divisive: “But I’m not black / white / happy / hungry / fabulously attractive, what does this have to do with me?”

Celebrating human power

Oxfam and Christian Aid encourage participation by creating an appealing inclusive collective identity which goes deeper than asking people to become an activist – they want you to become a good human. Julie Wood, Oxfam’s director of corporate communications said about Be Humankind: “A lot of people want to see change but feel useless when faced with the issues, but we are all in this together.”

Those last six words are key to the success of this approach. By invoking a common identity that has respect and intolerance of injustice at its heart, these campaigns make change seem possible through the power of collective action. It also reaches a warm, glowing hand into our technologically insulated and community-starved 21stC lives. For anyone with a swollen social conscience like myself, it’s heady stuff.

This is a neat way of tapping into the support of people who are interested in the issues but who are apathetic, or turned off by obviously emotional charity appeals. But what about people who still need convincing that they should care about poverty or injustice? Aiming for the lowest-hanging fruit makes sense though, and I’d be very interested to know how these campaigns have performed. Go human power!

1. They have racks of fruit and veg outside which they light up with strange, appetite-killing blue and violet light at night.
2. Above the shop is a box-shaped clock attached to the building by some spindly bits of metal.

The clock is a memorial to one of the East London suffragettes, Minnie Lansbury, who was elected to Poplar’s first Labour council in 1919. Minnie, along with other council members, spent 6 weeks in prison for failing to collect the full rates owed by the people of Poplar (Poplarians?) Bow police station is a little way down the road, where lots of the suffragettes were held after being arrested at demonstrations for breaching the peace, often in nearby Victoria Park. At one protest in 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst and 20 other women were marching to the park, linked to each other with chains, when they were ambushed by police who dragged them to the boating enclosure and smashed the padlocks, twisting the arms and tearing the hair of any women who tried to stop them.

Sylvia Pankhurst was dispatched to Canning Town by her formidable mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, in 1906, to win the support of the working women in the East. She set up the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, working from No. 400 Old Ford Road. The group didn’t just campaign and protest (and support pro-women’s suffrage MP George Lansbury, Minnie’s father-in-law and grandfather of Angela, yes, that Angela, a.k.a Jessica Fletcher) they also ran a hall for meetings and lectures, a cost-price restaurant, a mother and baby clinic, a day nursery, and a toy factory, as an early sort of fairtrade initiative. I find this tremendously impressive.

Emmeline (and her other daughter, Christabel) eventually became estranged from Sylvia, her East London suffragettes and her socialist, pacifist ideals. She stayed in the East, moving to Essex where she continued to campaign on a number of issues for the rest of her long life, much to the discomfort of the rest of Woodford. My grandparents lived in Woodford, and I can imagine them disapproving thoroughly. But then, they were terribly good at it.

Here’s a bit more Sylvia-lore for interested folks. You can also read some excerpts from her own record of her time in Bow on Home Made Jam. I also recommend Rosemary Taylor’s book Walks Through History: Exploring the East End (Amazon) which has a walk dedicated to the suffragettes. The wonderful Women’s Library in Aldgate also has a lot of walks featuring many of the kickass women of East London.

And finally, if you feel like thanking the women that fought so hard to win the vote, you can join the Fawcett Society, which was founded by suffragist Millicent Fawcett, and has been working for women and equality since 1866.