Hope the season of spring has brought good, hopeful things to you.  We’ve been settling into our new home and look forward with a renewed dedication to making women visible and powerful in the media! Make a tax deductible donation today to support the WMC in its “office of its own.”

We held the last training session of the first class of 2009’s Progressive Women Voices in our new space — co-founder Jane Fonda (very hip in sunglasses and cap, next to her granddaughter, Viva) stopped by and thanked the graduates for being such effective voices for women.

Progressive Women’s Voices — Second Class

We are thrilled to announce our second Progressive Women’s Voices class for 2009. These ten women are an extraordinary group. They include a LGBT activist from the Midwest, an attorney fighting wrongful convictions, a director working with the UN’s Millennium Goals, a grassroots activist in New York challenging street harassment, a leader in the field of breast cancer research and five other incredible women. Meet the new women here. This class received 115 applications for 10 spots, and there’s only one class left this year. The next deadline to apply is June 1, so please send all the great women you know our way! Application and program information are here. We have now trained 44 women who have achieved over 1500 media hits since Feb. 2008! PWV truly is making a difference in the media landscape by infusing it with progressive, feminist voices. Help change the conversation in media — make a donation now!

Gloria Steinem in San Francisco

A note to our friends and supporters in the San Francisco area: co-founder Gloria Steinem will be in the area the weekend of April 25. We want to once again wish her a happy 75th birthday — and thank her for her astounding contributions to women of the world! WMC friends are hosting an intimate dinner with Steinem in SF on Saturday, April 25 — please click here

for details if you’d like to join us.

We also want to note that on the same weekend Gloria will participate in PWV graduate Mable Yee’s Engage Her Multicultural Women’s Leadership Conference at the University of California Berkeley, California  — and The Four Legends of Feminism, “Passing the Baton,” with Dolores Huerta, Aileen Hernandez and Yuri Kochiyama.  The WMC is a co-sponsor of this important event that will help to highlight the voices of women of color.

WMC Essential Reads

Be sure to check out our blog, Majority Post, for some WMC Essential Reading.

PWV-er and technology expert Deanna Zandt wrote an exclusive for the WMC about this past weekend’s social media assault against Amazon, in response to their removal of feminist, LGBT and sexual-empowerment themed-books from their sales rankings.  Zandt’s piece was picked up and linked to by a number of sites including AlterNet, RHRealityCheck, and Feministing. Click here to read “AmazonFAIL: How Online Social Tools Can Wreak Havoc-and Repair It”

PWV-er Patricia DeGennaro, who has spent time in Afghanistan advising the president there, addresses the need for women to be at the negotiating table; our colleague Marianne Schnall, founder of Feminist.com interviews Jane Fonda about her new Broadway play, and more. Look also for fascinating pieces on autism, Patsy Mink, breakthroughs on Suffrage sites, and low-income housing for women.  And be sure to check out our Daily News Brief, posted 5 days a week with news by and about women. Sign up to have both our Exclusives, and the Daily News Brief delivered to your inbox. As the WMC values women’s work by paying our writers and interns, if you value our exclusives and Daily News Brief, please donate now.

The WMC on Facebook and Twitter

Find the WMC on Facebook and Twitter!  Click here to become a WMC Facebook fan — and here to follow us on Twitter.   You can also add our blog to your RSS feeds.

The WMC in Africa

I was thrilled to be asked by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland to participate in the Women’s Colloquium hosted by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (left), and Tarja Halonen, president of Finland. This gathering of hundreds of international women leaders in Monrovia March 7 and 8 was astounding. I presided over the opening plenary, which included introducing the presidents of Senegal and Sierra Leone as well as the highest ranking women leaders from Canada, Spain, France, Mozambique.  WMC friends also in Monrovia: Abby Disney (screening her extraordinary film about the Liberian market women, Pray the Devil Back to Hell) and Ambassador Swanee Hunt (conducting workshops on women’s leadership she so expertly offers at her Harvard Institute.)  I will be writing more about this on my soon-to-begin blog  (how could I resist) but in the meantime you can get the full flavor of the Monrovian Colloquium by viewing Lynn Sherr’s piece on World Focus and reading her interview with President Johnson Sirleaf on. Sherr is a very good friend (and opinion writer) of the WMC’s and we congratulate her on the excellent work.

It was great to share the Monrovia experience with WMC friend Nadine Hack, who has spent many years working in Africa. Her great blog posts can be read here.

The WMC’s Very First Award Ceremony

The WMC would like to know your opinion! On June 17, 2009, we are planning to have our first-ever honoree event. At the (yet-to-be named) awards, the WMC will acknowledge some of the year’s most positive and negative media moments, figures, and platforms that affect women. We would be delighted to hear your suggestions for work that should be celebrated as well as work that should be criticized.  Obviously, the staff has opinions about this as well, but we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to hear what our larger community has to say before we make any final decisions. If you have suggestions, please submit them by Wednesday, April 22 here. After the board chooses the final honorees, we will let everyone who responds know what the decisions were. Thanks in advance for your help.
Until the next time, where we’ll update on the many events we’ve co-sponsored — from Unfinished Business-an Intergenerational Speak-Out with the Sackler Center and Ms. Foundation for Women, to a fascinating discussion of women reporters in the Congo with Women’s eNews.

With warmest wishes,

Carol Jenkins

WMC President

P.S. Make sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming spring on-line auction!  On April 23 you can start bidding on items such as a gavel given by Gloria Steinem and used by Bella Abzug, to a lunch with marketing extraordinaire Linda Kaplan Thaler, to a case of wine from a woman owned boutique vineyard in CA to a famous array of books.