Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles" | Video on TED.com

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles" Video on TED.com

WAHT CAN i DO???

Militarism, Mutilation, and Minerals: Understanding the Occupation of Afghanistan




Militarism, Mutilation, and Minerals: Understanding the Occupation of Afghanistan from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

http://www.culturesofresistance.org/malalai-joya

By mid-2010, the war in Afghanistan had arguably passed Vietnam as the longest war in the history of the United States. At the war’s outset many U.S. citizens supported the invasion as a means of holding responsible those who orchestrated the attack on the World Trade Center. However, as time has passed and more American troops and Afghan civilians die, the U.S. government has struggled to maintain popular support by emphasizing other justifications for continuing the costly occupation. One of the most controversial concerns is the plight of women. Many commentators, some of them Afghan women, argue that the presence of coalition forces in their country has allowed them to be more active in politics and civil society. But not all women agree, and many find the country just as dangerous as ever. Furthermore, some believe that, in reality, the U.S. is far more concerned with the nearly $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits that the U.S. discovered in June 2010. Watch this short film, featuring suspended Afghan Member of Parliament Malalai Joya, which allows women in Afghanistan to give voice to their reasons for opposing an ongoing occupation.

Check this out......http://www.takebacktheday.ca/her-story.php
Mother's Day Her-StoryWhile the Feminist 

Heritage Minute tells the essence of the story, the true history of Mother's Day is a fascinating one – read on to learn more.

A day rooted in social activism

The inspiration for a national Mother's Day came from a West Virginian woman and mother of eleven who suffered through the loss of eight of her children. In 1858 at only 26, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis organized women in her area into Mothers Day Work Clubs to improve the health and sanitation conditions in her county. During the American Civil War, she was adamant her clubs stay neutral, and they courageously nursed soldiers from both sides. When the war ended, she arranged the first Mothers Friendship Day in 1868 to reconcile friends and families torn apart by the bitter conflict, and the holiday was celebrated on several occasions after.

Mothers' Day For Peace (1870)

Influenced by Ann Jarvis and reeling from the carnage left over from the American Civil War, the prominent Boston writer, abolitionist, and suffragist Julia Ward Howe issued a Mothers' Day Proclamation in 1870, calling on women around the world to unite to end war. (Click here to read an excerpt of this stirring text.) She saw mothers as being uniquely invested in stopping the killing of each others sons, and worked to have a Mothers' Day for Peace recognized on June 2. Though it never really caught on, in recent years Mother's Day has been reclaimed by the American peace movement in actions to end the Iraq War.

Memorial Mothers Day (1908)

When Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis passed away, her daughter Anna vowed to realize her mother's dream of a day commemorating mothers and the "matchless service rendered to humanity." On the second Sunday of May 1908, the third anniversary of her mother's death, 15,000 people showed up at a Philadelphia church to celebrate a general memorial day for all mothers. Anna also began the custom of wearing a carnation on Mother's Day, a pure and inexpensive symbol of love and respect.

Mother's Day goes national... and loses its original meaning (1914)

By 1909, Canada, Mexico, and 45 U.S. States were celebrating Mothers Day. In 1914, it was declared a U.S. national holiday. But thanks to tinkering by officials, the apostrophe was moved and it became "Mother's Day," a day to celebrate the individual mother and her work in the home, thus changing the collective nature and meaning of every Mothers Day that had come before.

Anna "Rebel" Jarvis

In many ways, the story of Mother's Day is the story of Anna Jarvis. She is the embodiment of the dutiful daughter and consummate activist, dedicating her life to pay tribute to her own mother. But her fierce nature really comes through when she began her unsuccessful lifelong fight against its commercialization. When carnation prices rose she attacked florists as pirates and racketeers whose greed was undermining the noble spirit of the day. In the 1930s, she was arrested protesting a meeting of the American War Mothers who were selling carnations to raise money. She even incorporated Mother's Day and threatened to sue anyone who infringed on the patent. Anna Jarvis would spend the rest of her life and her fortune bitterly trying to take back the day. And though she was never a mother herself, she is considered to be the mother of Mother's Day. Anna Jarvis spent her last days in a nursing home; penniless after her long struggle, her bills were paid (without her knowledge) by the American Florists' Exchange.

Mother's Day today

While Julia Ward Howe's dream of a worldwide women's congress for peace did not come to pass as such, women around the world have been gathering together for decades to build international alliances and common cause – at international conferences such as in Cairo or Beijing, in national meetings and networks, and every day through online and phone relationships. More than a hundred and fifty years after Mother's Day was first celebrated, there are women in every country who are working for safer, healthier, more peaceful communities and societies.
Inter Pares works with women and men who share our desire for a world free from sexism, inequality and war. We strengthen local and national movements by raising money and generating political support for their work, collaborating in developing plans of action, connecting them with like-minded groups, and engaging in policy advocacy and public education in Canada. In each case, we bring a special support to women's leadership, and a feminist analysis to problems and potential approaches. Whether the initiatives focus on building peaceful societies, healthy communities, ecological agriculture, or just economies, the common threads that bind them are solidarity and social justice – supporting marginalized communities to build better futures.
This Mother's Day, take back the holiday's original meaning: give a day's tribute to the women in your life by supporting women who are bringing about generations of change.

The First Mother's Day proclaimed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe
was a passionate demand for disarmament and peace.

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. 

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Biography of Julia Ward Howe

US feminist, reformer, and writer Julia Ward Howe was born May 27, 1819 in New York City. She married Samuel Gridley Howe of Boston, a physician and social reformer. After the Civil War, she campaigned for women rights, anti-slavery, equality, and for world peace. She published several volumes of poetry, travel books, and a play. She became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. She was an ardent antislavery activist who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1862, sung to the tune of John Brown's Body. She wrote a biography in 1883 of Margaret Fuller, who was a prominent literary figure and a member of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalists. She died in 1910.

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“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
– John Lennon