The iconic image of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst has become part of an online art project to mark the anniversary of her birthday tomorrow
This is cool (points also to the Guardian for saying ‘anniversary of her birthday’).
Artist Charlotte Newson has also created a range of tools to encourage women to take part in or support the project including a kit which is available to download, featuring Pankhurst’s biography, images from home, personal artefacts, memorable quotes, unusual details of her life and some of the personal stories behind the portrait. It also features ideas for how individuals, groups and schools might like to celebrate the birth of the leader of the British Suffragette party.
“The original Women Like You portrait was a hugely moving labour of love for everyone involved and it created a great community of women who wanted to share their stories with the world.
“Now, using the internet and social media networks, we’re able to give even more women the opportunity to leave their mark and become part of the Women Like You story with this birthday card tribute to Emmeline Pankhurst.”
This week, I attended a screening of Miranda July’s new film, The Future. Like all of July’s work, it’s arresting, imaginative, playful and painful. You should really see it.
Rarely do we see Hollywood films with black female stars, let alone child stars. Positively radical in this regard, Crooklyn invites audiences to look at black experience through Troy’s eyes, to enter the spaces of her emotional universe, the intimate world of family and friends that ground her being and give her life meaning.
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After about 10 years, I watched Spike Lee’s Crooklyn again. bell hooks is right—positively radical. And so good.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn worked for the labor and women’s rights movements in the early to mid-1900s. She was a total badass; if you don’t know much about her, you should find out more. And by watching this video, you can listen to a kickass song about Flynn, written by labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill in the 1910s.
“Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor, And her dress may not be very fine; But a heart in her bosom is beating That is true to her class and her kind. And the grafters in terror are trembling When her spite and defiance she’ll hurl; For the only and thoroughbred lady Is the Rebel Girl.”
It’s a problem with relying on a loosey-goosey definition of feminism. Feminism that focuses on defining women as autonomous individuals and centers on personal freedom OR feminism that focuses on equality with men are limited because they gloss right over the action-element that is KEY: as defined by bell hooks and many others, feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. It is an ACTION, not an identity or a lifestyle.
