Wednesday, March 30 7:30 PM

Taming the Female Body

A new Suppressed Histories show looks at how women have been bound, broken, shrouded, and hobbled in the name of beauty or propriety: witches' bridles, corsets, burqas, bound feet, and other constricting, breaking or cutting off of women's body parts.

No, not only genital excision someplace else: surgical "labial reductions," breast implants, and high-fatality "gastric bypass" operations, right here in the USA. Premiere showing.

Change Makers for Women, 6536 Telegraph Ave, Oakland CA $10-15.
Wheelchair access. All are welcome. Info: maxdashu (at) LMI.net


Save the date:
Friday, April 22
Icons of the Matrix: a Global View

Primeval art shows deep continuities across time and space. This stunning visual presentation surveys recurrent images of the most ancient religions: female figurines, vulva stones, ancestral megaliths and ceremonial pots shaped like women or breasts. These
sacred signs span history from the oldest archaeological finds to more recent and living indigenous cultures. Reaching deep into
ancient history for the long vision of spiritual culture...

Goddess Is Alive! Series on the Peninsula, 7 to 9:30 pm Unitarian Universalist Congregation
300 E. Santa Inez, San Mateo (near Poplar)
650-342-5946 Directions: www.uusm.net/
$20 General Public and $15 Students and Seniors
See the full line-up of speakers in this series at
www.serpentina.com/goddessalive-x.html

and

Sunday, May 1
Women's Rites of Spring Festival with Max, Luisah Teish, Leilani
Birely, Carolyn Brandy, Jennifer Berezan, Evelie Posch, Karen Vogel
and Cosi Fabian. Full details at LilithInstitute.com or
DaughtersoftheGoddess.com.


Call for political action:
Fight back against the spineless, cowardly Democrats:

Dear supporter,
We have very disturbing news to report - some Democratic leaders are actively recruiting anti-abortion candidates and forcing out pro-choice Democrats!

Feminists and progressives must
speak
out to stop the Democratic Party from becoming "Republican-lite" on
women's issues and undermining its own women candidates.

Barbara Hafer is a strong advocate for reproductive rights and was the frontrunner to take on extremist Republican incumbent Rick
Santorum in the 2006 Pennsylvania Senate. She has just been forced out of the race by Democratic leaders and consultants in favor of an anti-abortion candidate they recruited.

Who did top Democrats pick to run against Santorum, one of the leading anti-abortion, anti-women's rights and anti-gay senators?

Top Democrats recruited Robert P. Casey Jr., a staunch abortion opponent in the mold of his father, the late Pennsylvania Governor
Bob Casey Sr. You may recognize his name from the 1992 Supreme Court
case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood, in which the senior Casey defended Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act, which was so extreme that the Supreme Court struck it down.

And who made sure that Hafer would not run? She was pushed out by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who previously supported Hafer, then made the call forcing her out of the race; Sen. Charles Schumer
of New York, who serves as the top Senate recruiter for the Democrats (as head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee); and political consultants who are already lining up with the Casey campaign.

Send a
message to each of them now - and tell them what you think.

To run another anti-abortion candidate against Santorum, as the Democrats did in 2000, will result in sure defeat. Hafer has won four
statewide elections in Pennsylvania and is the strongest possible challenger to Santorum. A recent Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin &
Associates poll conducted on behalf of Hafer showed that 60% of Pennsylvania Democrats, 54% of Independents, and 40% of Republicans are pro-choice.

Don't mistake this for a random act -- it is a calculated effort by party leaders to build a so-called "bigger tent" at the expense of
women's rights. It's happening in Rhode Island as well, where an anti-abortion candidate has been recruited by Schumer and national Democratic leaders to run against a pro-choice candidate in the party's Senate primary.

If we don't stop this losing strategy now, they'll use it again and again.

Women are the vast majority of both the voters for, and fundraising direct mail supporters of, the Democratic Party. We deserve better
than this. It will do women no good if both major parties are hostile to women candidates and women's rights.

Please
sign our petition today to:

Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), Chair of the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the person responsible for recruiting
Robert Casey Jr. to challenge Hafer; and
Pa. Governor Ed Rendell, who turned his back on Barbara Hafer and
helped force her out of the race. We must let the Democrats know that
women will no longer be taken for granted.

Please also forward this message to as many of your friends and
family as possible.

We must send a constant stream of email petitions flowing to the
Democratic leaders - perhaps they have forgotten about the power of
women's votes and the gender gap, but we have not. Thank you for
standing up for women!

For equality,

Eleanor Smeal, Feminist Majority PAC
Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women PAC
Martha Burk
Dolores Huerta
Gloria Steinem
Faye Wattleton
Marie Wilson




Max Dashu
Suppressed Histories Archives
Global Women's History
www.suppressedhistories.net