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Mom’s Clean Air Force Twitter Party

Thursday December 15th our friends at Clever Girls Collective will be hosting an historic twitter chat sponsored by the women at Mom’s Clean Air Force featuring EPA administrator Lisa P Jackson.

This is an amazing opportunity for MOMocrats readers to actually ask first questions about one of the issues that effects all of us, air quality.

Currently, there are no national limits on the amount of mercury and other toxic air pollution released from power plant smokestacks. The toxic air pollutants from the coal and oil fired plants have numerous and serious health effects, especially on children. Research has shown that Mercury harm’s children's developing brains, including effects on memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills.

The other toxic metals found such as arsenic, chromium and nickel are known to cause cancer. Not to mention the damage Mercury and many of the other toxic pollutants causes our nation's lakes, streams, and fish.

This is just a handful of the reasons why the EPA’s proposed Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule will have a huge impact on our health, the air, the economy and even jobs.

The EPA estimates the value of the improvements to health alone total $59 billion to $140 billion by 2016 by preventing thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of heart attacks, bronchitis cases and asthma attacks. Meeting the standards created by the rule would also create new jobs such as building, installing and operating the equipment to reduce the harmful emissions of mercury and other toxics.

Got questions? Well join the Clever Girls Collective community Q & A session with Administrator Jackson where you can get your air quality-related questions by her! They’ll also be discussing clean air—how pollution has affected you and your family sharing tips for ways you can help ensure we leave a legacy of cleaner air to future generations. They’ll also be offering prizes throughout the hour — including Moms Clean Air Force prize packs and gifts.

Moms Clean Air Force Twitter Event ft. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson on Thursday, Dec 15 at 12pm PT/3pm on Twitter! Use the Tweetgrid here: http://bit.ly/uJeZ26

Follow: @momsCAF, @lisapjackson, @clevergirlscoll—and hashtag #momsCAF

RSVP here to let us know you’re joining the event

Please spread the word with your networks by tweeting this out:

Join us! Moms Clean Air Force Twitter Event w/ EPA Admin @lisapjackson! 12/15 @ 12 P/ 3 ET! Fab prizes! #momsCAF RSVP http://bit.ly/mcafrsvp

This is a sponsored MOMocrats post written as part of the Clever Girls Collective campaign for greater awareness of Mom's Clean Air Force.

 

 

 

 

APEC Summit on Women & the Economy

Recently, I was privileged to be able to attend a part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Women & the Economy Summit in San Francisco. The conference brought together women leaders, government officials, diplomats, and corporate innovators to discuss actions to improve the lives of women in the Asia-Pacific region, and by doing so, the world's economy. Recognizing that women are a vast, largely untapped resource for change and growth, the group spent a week in San Francisco working on plans for change.  This was one of several meetings around the Pacific Rim leading up to the APEC Summit in Hawaii in November that President Obama will attend.

The Conference Keynote was delivered by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Secretary Clinton has inspired a generation of women to enter political life to try to dismantle the political barriers that keep women from fully participating in economic growth.  Her speech was a call to action, for all nations to tap the power, creativity, and drive of women to help elevate all people, across all regions.

Although characterized by some in the media as a "call for equal rights," Clinton's vision was much broader than that.  In her speech, she stated,

Now there will be a temptation on the part of those observing or covering this summit, perhaps on the part of those of us attending it as well, to say that our purpose is chiefly to advance the rights of women, to achieve justice and equality on women’s behalf. And that is, of course, a noble cause to be sure and one that is very close to my heart. But at the risk of being somewhat provocative at the outset, I believe our goal is even bolder, one that extends beyond women to all humankind. The big challenge we face in these early years of 21^st century is how to grow our economies and ensure shared prosperity for all nations and all people. We want to give every one of our citizens, men and women alike, young and old alike, greater opportunity to find work, to save and spend money, to pursue happiness ultimately to live up to their own God-given potentials.

Secretary Clinton went on to give specific examples and data illustrating the issues that Summit attendees hoped to offer specific, concrete actions to resolve.  She went on to note that her husband is fond of saying that "we don't have a person to waste" in this effort, and she added, "We certainly don't have a gender to waste."

The full text and video of Secretary Clinton's speech can be found at the US State Department's website.

After the speech, the high-level diplomats and delegates from all the APEC countries convened in a closed-door session to work out the details that would become the San Francisco Declaration. The key elements of the Declaration that are required for economic empowerment of women are:

• Access to capital;
• Access to markets;
• Building capacity and skills; and
• Promoting women in leadership positions.

All twenty-one nations represented at the Summit unanimously adopted the declaration.

I was not able to stay very long at the Summit, but I was able to attend one Plenary Session moderated by Tina Brown of The Daily Beast and Newsweek.  Also on the panel were Ilene Lang, President & CEO of Catalyst, a research and advisory firm that specializes in promoting women in business; Blanca Trevino, CEO of Softtek, a global Information Technololgy firm based in Mexico; Romi Haan, CEO of Haan Corporation, an appliance and beauty products company in South Korea; Susan Fleishman, Executive Vice President of Commincations for Warner Brothers Entertainment; and Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.

The Plenary Session was called "Women at the Top: How Diverse Leadership Benefits Everyone." It featured a candid discussion among these high-powered women of issues surrounding workplace diversity, being a woman leader in male-dominated industries, and work-life balance for women. The panel enthusiastically endorsed nurturing a work-life balance to promote creativity and productivity in the workplace. Romi Haan noted that she didn't want workers who were just successful on the job, but "successful in life" as well.  On the need for work-life balance and the issue of childrearing, Blanca Trevino commented, "Someone can always fill in for you at a meeting, but no other mom can fill in for you to help your daughter get ready for her first date."

Cherie Blair's foundation is leading the way in impoverished nations in encouraging women-owned businesses and entrepreneurship.  Their approach is to offer women in developing nations the tools needed to start and maintain their own businesses through "confidence, capacity and capital".  One of the innovations her foundation has initiated is a Skype-based mentoring program for women in developing nations to be paired with successful women around the globe, so they are not limited to the resources available locally.

The week-long Summit featured a number of other plenary sessions and workshops with equally impressive leaders in discussions on how to solve some of the most pressing problems and opportunities of our time.  The message of the Summit was that in a time of global economic crisis and concern, women may be the key to unlocking a new era of prosperity. The underlying message was "when women are successful, the world benefits."

--Glennia

Photos by Glennia Campbell.  All Rights Reserved.

To President Obama on the Drawdown from Afghanistan: Put Veterans to Work Through 'Troops to Teachers'

Tonight at 8 pm ET, President Obama will outline his plan to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan.

Not only is this a fulfillment of his promise at his West Point 2010 speech to do so, it's long past time we pivot away from battlefields and commit our precious people-power and national spending priorities to the many economic troubles we have at home. The American people favor, by large margins, a return of our troops and an end to the occupation of Afghanistan: 64% believe that troop levels should be decreased and 73% believe "substantial" numbers of troops should be withdrawn starting this summer.

It's an undeniable fact that our veterans will be coming home to a weakened economy. How will we absorb them into a job market that can barely sustain the people here already searching for work? We've heard nothing but "austerity" talk from the GOP, and both tax cuts and job cuts -- yes, government jobs are also jobs -- from the Republican party. Clearly they have nothing to offer.

Bob Fertik over at the USA Jobs Party has a great suggestion: immediately hire 3 million teacher's aides to help in the classroom, and give 99ers (those who have been out of work longer than the 99 weeks covered by unemployment benefits) and veterans first crack at work as teacher's aides.

Peace to All Mothers on Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all our readers who are mothers, and to all mothers everywhere around the world.

The original advocates for a Mother's Day holiday, including activist Ann Reeves Jarvis and poet Julia Ward Howe, wanted a day when mothers would gather together to promote peace. Here is an excerpt from Julia Ward Howe's "Mother's Day Proclaimation:"

After Osama bin Laden's Death, Time to Restock the Emergency Kits?

Osama bin Laden is dead.  Do you know where your duct tape and canned foods are?

The man we've been tracking for a decade, and the reason so many American lives have been lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally been taken out by Navy SEALS in a Pakistan mission worthy of a Tom Clancy nail-biter.

Cheering crowds celebrated the mission in Washington, D.C. and New York City after President Obama announced late Sunday night that the face of evil we've been chasing for a decade had been killed and buried at sea.

I'm sure that many of us thought this day would never come and that at some point we would read about bin Laden's death from old age in a cold, lonely cave somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan, a disappointing coda to America's anti-terror efforts.

Seeing news reports of the daring raid brings back vivid memories of the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks. None of us will ever forget what it was like to live through that fear, especially here in the shadow of the nation's capital when, for months, the constant hum of fighter jets in the sky became as common as the sounds of neighborhood kids playing outside my house on a warm spring day.

Go Read It: Nick Kristof, The Healers of 9/11 (Beyond the 11th)

It seems lately the news is steeped in unending reports of religious bigotry, with anti-Muslim bias driving opposition to the Park 51 community center, and now some idiot "pastor" who thinks burning a Qur'an to mark the events of September 11, 2001 is a good idea rather than a hateful provocation and incitement to violence. UPDATED: Apparently the pastor has decided to cancel his Qur'an-burning event. He had wanted to make a deal to have the Park51 project moved in exchange for cancellation. It doesn't appear that any plans to move the Park51 construction site have been announced, however.

Please, go read this: The Healers of 9/11.

In times of fear and darkness, we tend to suppress the better angels of our nature. Instead, these women unleashed theirs.

Paul Barker, who for many years ran CARE’s operations in Afghanistan, believes America would have accomplished more there if our government had shared the two women’s passion for education and development. “I can only wonder at what a different world it could be today if in those fateful months after 9/11 our nation’s leadership had been guided more by a people-to-people vision of building both metaphorical and physical bridges,” Mr. Barker said.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, I believe women can lead the way to peace. These women already have. What we need to do is build on what they've started. Let's hang onto these two old-time notions--mercy and grace--as we mark an event that's indelibly etched in our communal memory and will no doubt continue to shape the steps we take going forward, Beyond the 11th.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

1,000 Americans Dead in the Afghanistan War

It's a terrible milestone to have reached. So much sacrificed by military families; so many deaths of Afghan civilians. How many years is too long? How many dead is too much to bear?

Set aside the corruption at Blackwater/Xe, or that the defense budget grows at the expense of spending at home. Let the pain of lost loved ones among Americans and the civilians who bear the brunt of the war in Afghanistan unite us in resolving to end this war.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k. 

Maternal health crisis worsening in U.S.

Yesterday the Lancet released a major study highlighting maternal morbidity and mortality in 181 countries from 1990-2008.

The United States ranks 39th with 16.7 deaths per 100,000. We're behind most of the OECD -- behind Canada, tiny Malta, Croatia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates. Instead of declining is accordance with Millennium Development Goal 5 -- the target is a 75% reduction in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) from 1990 to 2015 -- the U.S. saw a 2% increase in MMR from 1990-2008.

I want you to gaze upon these picture for a few minutes:

I know this is hard to read but bear with me: Countries in blue, from very dark to light, have seen a decline in maternal mortality. Notice that the U.S. is in red. That's because instead of declining, our rate has increased. Our company in seeing at least a 1% increase, in descending order: Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, South Africa, Namibia, Côte d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Malawi, [United States], Cameroon, Denmark, Singapore, Georgia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Slovenia and Chad.

Go Read It: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton & The Status of Women as a Measure of Progress

Not just for Women's History Month, but for every day of every year going forward: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes the argument that peace and security come to nations only when the well-being of women everywhere is assured.

A brief excerpt on how women are leading the way in creating peace and prosperity:

In South Africa, women living in shanty towns came together to build a housing development outside Cape Town all on their own, brick by brick. And today, their community has grown to more than 50,000 homes for low income families, most of them female-headed.

In Liberia, a group of church women began a prayer movement to stop their country’s brutal civil war. It grew to include thousands of women who helped force the two sides to negotiate a peace agreement. And then, those women helped elect Ellen Johnson Sirleaf president, the first woman to lead an African nation.

In the United States, a young woman had an idea for a website where anyone could help a small business on the other side of the world get off the ground. And today, the organization she co-founded, Kiva, has given more than $120 million in microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, 80 percent of them women.

The rest is a must-read. There's also video of Clinton's speech.

H/T to Nicholas Kristof, who first formulated this as "Women's Rights Are a Security Issue" in the NYT recently.

Cynematic's personal blog is P i l l o w b o o k. She also blogs at LA Moms Blog and can be found sporadically on Twitter as @cyn3matic.