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I sat down with the others and batted around ideas for what to write on my sign. They were already hard at work, one drawing an enormous cat, another penciling out “Black Women Deserve a Seat at the Table” in fancy cursive. I was so torn that I ended up ...

We looked over a mosaic of heads, 60,000 of them, on the wide lawn facing the provincial parliament, Queen’s Park. What a difference compared to yesterday’s inaugural tristesse (“inauguration,” from “augur,” v.: to portend a good or bad outcome). The women, men, children, and dogs (many dogs, ours included) behaved ...

Yet it was not only pussy hats and signs declaring that “Girls Just Want to Have Fun(Damental Human Rights).” Unlike the smaller sister march in the East Liberty neighborhood, organizers did not bill this march as explicitly committed to intersectionality -- the notion that the fight against gender and sexual ...

My little group of marchers, five women and one pink-hatted man, represented modern America’s geographic and political re-sorting in microcosm. We all hailed from the red-state heartland --Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Idaho -- and had migrated to the coasts for college and graduate school, then to the evergreen blue bubble of ...

The celebratory atmosphere, reminiscent of the open-air party that accompanied the city's 1996 Olympics, went a long way towards soothing our anxiety about Trump's presidency. The size of the protest vastly exceeded expectations. As my cousin (mom of a Georgia Tech student) remarked, the only time such a large crowd ...

Those of us on the political left were excited to see so many other likeminded people given that we were in South Carolina, one of the most conservative states in the country. I wouldn’t have imagined such a gathering when, during the presidential primaries, Trump opened his campaign headquarters on ...

Luckily Buffalo has also experienced a resurgence of political activism in recent years. This has ranged from Black Lives Matter to umbrella groups like the Partnership for the Public Good, the Western New York Peace Center, and People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), activists which have done invaluable work coordinating ...

That was the most controversial behavior I witnessed (or rather, overheard) at LA’s Women’s March of an estimated 750,000 people.  A young woman contemplating smoking pot, a drug that California voted overwhelmingly to make legal for recreational use, and her friend quickly shutting it down. There was more than one ...

I have two lingering impressions from the rally. One is that New Hampshire has an amazing pipeline that nurtures women candidates.   Both our Senators and both our representatives in Congress are women. Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, and Carol Shea Porter all spoke, while Annie Kuster marched with the New Hampshire ...

For a short time recently, Australia had its first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. Holding together a minority government with the help of independents, Gillard managed to pass landmark legislation regarding education and disability. During her time at the helm, the parliament also passed a record amount of legislation. She ...

Special congratulations are due to organizers Lisa Kaul and Paulina Bren, who kept at it as the numbers swelled, making it such an inspirational event. When the organizers began two weeks ago, one person estimated that 25 people would show up, another put it at 100. Within a week it ...