Today we have more from my conversation with activist rockstar Zoe Nicholson.

Read part one here.

THE RADICAL HOUSEWIFE: Reading your writing is really a balm for me.  You are a Second Wave vet who harkens back to the First, with arms and heart wide open for the Third, Fourth, and others yet to come.  I wish this weren’t such an elusive quality, but it is.  We become activists because we are compassionate and sensitive, yet those qualities often lead to frustration and burnout.  Some who claim a desire to dismantle power structures cling to the power they do have and refuse to let go!  How do you cultivate your own openness?  What advice do you give others?

ZOE NICHOLSON: I am so very fond of being open.  It is the ultimate coming out.  And shared power is the only way to insulate from self-importance.  I like the new non-hierarchical movement.  I think one advantage is I went to professional computer school in 1985 and got my first PC in 1982.  I love technology.  Of course, I also love to write so there is no loneliness in using a keyboard to communicate.

(Zoe is pictured at left.  Read more about her strike for the ERA in her book The Hungry Heart. )

There is a calling to sit together.  I want someone to push my wheelchair and I want to be in on the latest joke or gossip or political coup.  Recently I went to an event for the Second Wave  at a college.  All the Second ladies had an elegant luncheon in a private college dining room with a shut door.  I refused and ate in the cafeteria with my old friends, my new friends and we had a blast.  Weeks later, a student wrote about that.  She honored Grace Welch and me for sitting with the students.  I hope they will remember it for a life time and use it.

On the other direction – I can tell you that I went to a Second Wave party and the President, Jacqui [Ceballos of the Veteran Feminists of America], who is my mentor, started walking across the room to me while holding Kate Millett’s hand.  ”Zoe, there is someone here who wants to meet you.”  I stopped her in her tracks and put out my hand, burst into tears and said, “Yes, I know who this is, and thank you, Kate, for changing my life.”  After that exchange, I got my coat and left.  It was all toooooooooooooo  much.  Just too much.  I am as in love with the women of the Second Wave as anyone could be.

Finally, let me say that the older ladies just don’t know what to do except what they perceived worked for them.  They thrived on meetings, rules, printed material, phone calls and Sisterhood.  They were lonely to have like-minded sisters.  Non-hierarchical movements, intersectionality, it all sounds and feels like chaos.  There is only one other who genuinely gets all this and that is Gloria Steinem.  And the Second Wavers are consciously looking for a successor.  I hope that does not happen.  We are all leaders and followers and the ones we have been looking for.

It has come to my attention that my recent blogs have been using the category “Idiots” far more often than the category “Awesome.”

Perhaps that explains why I am so far behind in the 2012 Circle of Moms Top Political Mom Blogs contest.  As of this writing, I am #23 in the rankings.  Though I don’t mind losing to The Mamafesto, Blue Milk, PunditMom and current leader Monologues of Dissent, I MIND VERY MUCH that I’m 12 places behind Pamela Geller, a racist so virulent she’s being watched by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sigh.

I hereby vow to be more proactive about sharing all that is awesome with my readers.  I’ll start with an heartfelt appreciation of my representative in Congress, Keith Ellison, shown here at the 2011 Minnesota State Fair with two adorable constituents and their dorky mom*:

Rep. Ellison issued the following statement yesterday, after previously confidential reports showed that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is using a race-based strategy to pursue its decidedly non-awesome agenda:

The exposed documents reveal that NOM’s ‘strategic goal’ is to ‘drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies.’

Our nation was founded on the principle of liberty and justice for all people—regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. NOM is clearly opposed to these basic ideals that so many Americans hold dear.

I call on people from all backgrounds to speak out against NOM’s agenda and vote NO on the anti-marriage amendment this November.

Isn’t that awesome?  I bet you’re jealous that Rep. Ellison doesn’t represent you.  

But there’s more!  Check out this video from the House floor, taken only hours ago:

Damn!  I wish Rep. Ellison had done that, and I’m so glad Rep. Rush did.  But since no one can vote for either of them until November, please make sure you vote for me, NOW!

AWESOME!

*Confidential to Ms. Geller: yes, I did let a practicing Muslim near my children.  Shortly after this photo was taken, my children and I were killed in a terrorist attack.**

**Just kidding!  Pamela Geller is a racist idiot!  Please don’t let her win!  Vote for ME!  

You were expecting Disneyland?

It’s no secret that I have few beefs with my President.  I like him, but I’m not willing to follow him everywhere he goes, for Obama has a tendency to meander into political territory that I find disturbing, to say the least.

There is, however, one man for whom I would gladly march off a cliff if he led me that way.  One man whom I love deeply and unequivocally, a man whose makes me smile just thinking about him, a man who has brought immeasurable joy to my life (except for, uh, my husband of course).

That man is Al Green.

I MELT.

The only way this could be improved is if he were crooning my absolute favorite Al song, “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is,” from the brilliant I’m Still in Love With You.  If that were the case, I would quit my housewifely duties on the spot to join an Obama 2012 phone bank team in Cincinnati. Or Scranton. Or Tallahassee.  Or anywhere, really.*

If you don’t have a copy that record (or Call Me, Gets Next to You or Let’s Stay Together for that matter), please don’t make an Obama campaign contribution until you’ve hurried to your nearest independent record store to make your life complete.  It’s easy to find, for it will be the only album in stock featuring a white wicker chair on the cover.

*confidential to David Axelrod: while this is an admittedly kick-ass housewife recruitment strategy, please don’t have your candidate actually do it. My children need me.

Regular readers of this blog know that I believe universal health care to be an absolute, rock solid, no-compromise 21st Century Family Value–especially the health care coverage of children, for cryin’ out loud.  Any candidate who has espoused “family values” on the campaign trail while voting against expanding Medicaid’s Children’s Health Insurance Program is guilty of hypocrisy on a truly epic level (yes, I’m talking about Michele Bachmann, but you knew that).

Regular readers of this blog also know that I believe in encouraging kids themselves to participate in the political process.  I also believe that the kids in my family are unusually good-looking.  Happily, the ad below, for Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, combines these two obsessions!

Would you look at that cutie??  It’s my gorgeous neice Hadley, whom you may recognize as the tiny brunette in a yellow raincoat in my blog banner.  The text of the print ad (which you should really try to see, in the Twin Cities mag of your choice, for this JPG does not do Hadley’s beauty justice) notes that “last year alone, Children’s provided more than $50 million worth of medical care that wasn’t covered by insurance.”

I see a great future for Hadley as a model for social justice campaigns.  Why, this very picture could be used to illustrate an appeal to contact your president about the disaster that is Plan B availability!  Picture Hadley’s grumpy face attached to this message: “Mr. Obama, are you seriously allowing public health policy to be guided by the Conference of Catholic Bishops instead of the SCIENTISTS at the Food & Drug Administration??”

OMFG. I love it.

PR folks may send requests for Hadley’s talents to theradicalhousewife at gmail dot com, and I’ll put you in touch with her momager.

I am the Radical Housewife.  I write about feminist parenting and politics on this blog, for a variety of other media outlets, and in a book I wrote that will enter the world in 2012.  A sensible career strategy at this point would involve pounding out reams of copy on the “ethical response” to witnessing child abuse (!!!!!!), but seriously, the fallout from the Penn State scandal has me ready to quit humanity and live in my backyard oak tree with the pumpkin-fattened squirrels.

In what could have been my darkest hour, THIS arrived at my door:

Now what on earth does the Beach Boys’ Smile Sessions box set have to do with feminist parenting and politics?  Nothing whatsoever!  And though I want desperately to sell out like all the cool mommy bloggers, I wasn’t given a nickel by Capitol to hawk this thing.  There is no obvious reason to write about it here, for to do so would not boost my platform in the slightest.

So why do it?  Because listening to this baby, all 144 tracks of it, is pure joy.  It’s unbelievable.  It’s fan-fucking-tastic.  I’ve been moved to tears on more than a few occasions.  To hear this music clearly, without the scratchy fuzz from forty-odd years’ worth of bootlegged copies, is an experience so profoundly wonderful that I couldn’t NOT write about it.  You have to hear it.  Buy the two-disc version if you’re not an obsessive nut like me (and like Brian Wilson, thank heavens), but for cryin’ out loud, be sure you BUY IT.

We all need joy in our lives, no matter who we are or what we do.  That’s relevant, don’t you think?

Yes, it’s true: I brought a kid in a Vikings hoodie to the (literal) capital of Packers country.  Happily, Madison’s Occupiers were a peaceful bunch.

Miriam’s flowered hoodie was a bit out of place, too. We also forgot to pack our clown noses.

I had to photograph my proudly public-schooled daughter with my favorite sign. To my readers who are teachers: THANK YOU.

Speaking on the day we visited was Dr. John Carlos, the 1968 Olympic bronze medalist whose raised fist on the awards podium remains one of the most iconic images of the American civil rights movement.  He expressed support for and solidarity with the nationwide movement–beautifully, I might add.

Miriam had no idea who John Carlos was, but she knew that her mom was freaking out that he just shook her hand and complimented her on being an Occupier at such a young age. That kind of excitement is always contagious!

“We live to make history. Much love, Dr. John Carlos 68 & 2011″

Activism doesn’t get any better than that.

Proof that activism should neither be limited to grownups nor devoid of fun: scenes from the first day of Occupy MN, Friday, October 7, 2011.

Friends, fans, flamers: I give you Barbra Peterson.

“We’re challenging you here today. We demand that you start covering the crime itself.  Start now doing stories about the backlog in processing rape kits.  Start now doing exposes on why only six percent of rapists serve any time.  That’s a crime in itself, don’t you think?  And how about how colleges try to discourage the victim from reporting the crime? Do you think the newspapers should be doing stories about that? Instead of a word we choose to call the event? What do you think?”

What DO you think?  Tell me in the comments.

One thing that we won’t debate, however, is the brilliance of Barbra, a woman I cannot BELIEVE I am lucky enough to know.

Pinch me!

As predicted, following the advice of The Feminist Breeder resulted in a large bump in my blog traffic–not because the subjects of Abortion & Menstruation are really that hot, after all, but because TFB has some of the most loyal readers anywhere on the web.  To my great delight, they left comments in abundance, and not simply ones that parroted back my point of view.  In some cases, the comments challenged me directly, but they did so without calling me a “pro-choice whore,” a “matriarchal gynecentrist,” or a homicidal maniac who looms over my children’s beds at night with an icepick.  How refreshing!  Thanks, all!

To welcome my new readers, I present my favorite feminist menstruation story of all time.  Believe me, it kicks the ass of The Red Tent.  ENJOY!

Via Spinner.com:

Date: August 28, 1992

What Went Down: When L7 got pushed, the all-girl grunge band pushed back. The crowd at England’s 1992 Reading Festival learned this the hard way. During the band’s set, guitarist Donita Sparks got fed up with all the crap fans were hurling onto the stage and retaliated by removing her bloody tampon and throwing it into the crowd. Some (un)lucky fan walked away with one of the most unsanitary souvenirs in alt-rock history.