When I think about labor movements and unions, two favorite stories come to mind, and both are true.
The first one is about a group of girls and young women known as the Lowell Factory Girls. They worked in the mills and factories of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 19th century.
Little more than children who labored for long days doing dangerous and exhausting work, they revolted in 1836 when their dismal wages were cut while their factory-owner-mandated living expenses went up.
One day, an 11-year-old worker named Harriet Hanson decided enough was enough. She walked out "with childish bravado," as she wrote in her 1898 memoir, declaring that she would go alone if she had to.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered his famous phrase, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," at his first inaugural address in 1933, he recognized that fear of the Great Depression could paralyze people and interfere with ways to address an unprecedented economic crisis. He realized that...
Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying, wrote about more than her own fear of flying in her bestselling novel, but she did manage to capture my own feelings whenever I board a hunk of a silver vessel about to hurtle across the sky. “My fingers (and toes) turn...
In this Women's History Month - especially on March 8, International Women's Day - my mind and heart fill with thoughts of women and girls around the world. Having worked globally, I have witnessed women's lives, heard their stories, seen their grief, abuse, and abject poverty. I have been at the side of women when they gave birth or lost a baby, strong and stoic, and watched more fortunate women advocate for, educate, and comfort their poorer village friends. Whether...
As we begin a new year with the relief of midterm elections behind us, many Americans are enjoying a sense of comfort about our political future. We saw a blue wave when a red one was predicted and a long-overdue increase in diversity among those elected to office at all levels of governance. We moved closer to holding accountable those who wished to do us harm, including a past president and his collaborators and insurrectionists. So it may seem too...
In all the talk about encroaching autocracy in the United States and elsewhere, politicians, pundits, media personalities, and others need to remember the words and wisdom of the revolutionary second first lady, Abigail Adams, who admonished her husband to “remember the ladies.” Another first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, echoed her predecessor in a recent CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour when she called out the absence of misogyny in various analyses of forces at work when countries descend into autocracies and...
Much has been written in the literature of public health about the shocking maternal mortality rate in the United States. Occasionally, media reports the alarming rate when there is a hook. Advocates concerned with women and health illuminate the problem in reports and at conferences. But in light of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion, new urgency arose in addressing U.S. maternal mortality and its causes because of the link between reproductive rights and the persistence of inherent racial...
As the new Covid booster becomes available, it's good to see eligible people lining up to receive it. In addition to providing a new layer of protection against the virus, the vaccine is a reminder that the Covid pandemic is not over, despite changes in safety protocols that contribute to continued resistance to preventive behavior change. More frequently now people are unmasked in places that leave us vulnerable to infection and, if we aren't careful, we could see a resurgence...