Blue Gal the Great and I over at Crablaw are promoting the Take Back the Blog 2008 effort this year. The PROBLEM is that Blue Gal and I are BOTH inconveniences by our respective home sales and relocations that are happening - you &(*#&$ing guessed it - NEXT WEEKEND when the event is to take place.
In short, we need some (s)heroes, some feminist black-belt bloggers to step up and PROMOTE the heck out of this event. We need YOU to help. Please help. If you call yourself a feminist, please do what a feminist would do: step up in the name of justice for women.
I have made several prior attempts to light a fire under the asses of the collective feminist mafia here at Daily Kos and I am confident that this fourth time will be the charm. The workers are few, the task is urgent. It may not be ours to repair the world but what lies at our keyboards is what we can clearly access (except for me, the frustrated internet-less this week....) and we are not morally free to desist from the effort, in my opinion.
Thank you.
- Contribute to TBTB 2008 as a woman engaged in online OR offline life. The purpose of the Take Back the Night marches which will be and have been taking place this spring is to raise awareness of the acts and atmosphere of intimidation, threats, harassment, predation and violence which women often experience in both the online AND offline worlds. Awareness of this bitter reality may be automatic for some Kossacks, but it sure as hell was NOT automatic to this all-boys-high-school student when he entered college as the naivest child ever to walk across Princeton's august gates. In short, IF and ONLY IF it would benefit YOU to do so, please consider contributing a post about your own experiences OR issues about which you have developed knowledge or interest in this regard.
Please send them to Blue Gal (and, if you wish, cc: me) at bluegalsblog [at} gmail dot> com. Feel free to email me as well at bruce.godfrey [at crablaw (dot] com. Sorry for not hotlinking, am already spamulated FUBAR.
- Promote this event to a few of your friends. While it may seem obvious - promote it, duh - there is no "invisible hand" moving publicity about this events. How many feminists does it take to change a planet? One at a time, starting with the send button on your email. Please email a permalink to this article to 4 of your feminist OR non-feminist friends with request for promotion. (While I ordinarily think that it is unethical to request a "Recommend" in a diary, other people will be the beneficiaries of this matter so PLEASE consider a recommend for THEM.)
I recommend sending it only to a few, rather than to a whole bunch, because your friends may be more likely to act if they don't feel like "target 43" on a 70 person email blast. But overrule this suggestion if it is the less effective way to go. Go with your gut.
- Urge your local government to pass resolutions supporting the Take Back the Blog 2008 effort, before . While this in itself is not a major force, it will get awareness in non-blog-land among people who don't eat, drink, hang and smell like all of us. It will provide additional exposure to these issues beyond our online subculture.
- Make sure that the Take Back the Night leadership in your campus or community knows of this TBTB event's existence. Some people who WON'T join a Take Back the Night march in any capacity might read a blog. Women's centers, sexual assault crisis centers, you name it.
- Promote this on MySpace and LiveJournal. I am not a fan of MySpace or LiveJournal but it's not about my prejudices. Those media were absolutely instrumental in getting the word out last time because those media make interlinking wonderfully contagious.
- Promote this event on your blog. Yes, a lot of us blog outside of this fine blog. Please, do this. Today. Blue Gal and I are straining under severe limits this week.
- Encourage the feminist blogger "pezzonovanti" to help us. I have sent kind entreaties to many of the leading feminist blogs, some of which have some derivation fo the word "feminist" in English or another language in their names. But I am a nobody, more or less and their attention gets a lot of competition. Emails from 30 different readers might get the attention of the Ecumenical Matriarchs and get them to help us poor folk out.
- Cross-post this to-do list to friendly venues. I am limited in my ability to access the net due to a move. You know who might be friendly to this issue? Please go for it!
- Volunteer to help Blue Gal with the organizing/hunting/reading of the powerful material. Blue Gal deserved better than to have as her junior partner on this project a) a male and b) someone who is distracted by personal/family/moving issues. When I organized TBTB 2007 last year, it was humbling and sobering, but an extreme honor, a VERY meaningful night without sleep, the most meaningful night I have ever spent as a blogger. I cannot repeat it this year, both because this is about women's empowerment and a bloke should not run it twice in a row, and because I am hamstrung by personal garbage. Please help Blue Gal, she is awesome.
- This tenth one is where you come in. You are smarter than I am, I can practically guarantee you. You are more creative, more dynamic and more capable of contributing to this effort than I am and more so than you think you are. It may not be yours to finish this task - the healing of the world, this world of incredible misogyny, violence, predation, rape and terror - but neither are you or I morally free to desist from the task. YOUR idea on what to do to promote this may well be the best of all. Don't wait for some slow clerk-thinker like me to validate your great idea - I am lost in my own world. DO IT and take pride in the accomplishment.
So thank you for ALL your efforts!!