Originally broadcast 2/26/07:
Jim Kirchherr remembers Harriet Woods, a national political figure and St. Louis native who died in 2007. During her last interview in 1999, she spoke of her work in the integration of St. Louis during the revolutionary sixties.
1 Comment
December 15, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I was finally sitting down today to a good read of
Harriet Woods’ book on women stepping up to power (she
served as Lt. Gov. of Missouri, and was in a hotly
competitive bid for US Senate in ‘82) that I had
bought from her at the 2001 Journalism and Women
Symposium, held in Montana (a nonprofit organization
of progressive women in media that included a couple
hundred of the most powerful women in print and
broadcast journalism in the country).
In lamenting of late the very real lack of opportunity for
women to gather to discuss issues concerning them on a
political and social level through local branches of
NOW and AAUW, who for the most part have inoperative
web links, little or no technical facility for web
content or functionality to create community forums,
and who seldom if ever have meetings or salons for
discussion face to face, I had begun contacting
various state and national officials of these
organizations, stating my observations and wondering
if there wasn’t a systemic solution to building up the
locals and offering them resources to do so, including
web functionality, and publicly-announced branch
meetings that women could find out about in their
communities for social opportunity at that level, but
got only hostility in return. Can you believe the
California president of NOW actually took time to call
me up and tell me off, while alternately musing that
she didn’t want to lose a good resource, if that’s
what I represented?!
So this morning I had written an email to Sen. Clinton
via her senate website wondering about how to more
effectively get electoral grassroots organizing
accomplished among women by helping local branches of
NOW and AAUW do the same. Got a quick brush-off reply
that was either electronically or staff driven that
she can’t respond to any out-of-state concerns or
questions. Not a good impression to leave when running
a national election… especially when it’s the
“little people” like my mother, who never had much
money but always sent a contribution in to the Clinton
campaigns, both in response to request for campaign
funds as well as spontaneously on her own who are the bedrock of successful fundraising. A far cry
from the style of Harriet Woods, who was a colleague
of Hillary’s and other leading Democratic women in the
National Women’s Political Caucus. Harriet was going
around the JAWS meeting urging all the women in a
jovially informal manner to run for office and if they
wanted advice to come talk to her. I wish I had. She
had top level contacts and an honest straightforward
manner that only a true Missourian could have, making
reference to their state slogan as the “show me”
state, and I believe she was sincere. One of her accounts in her campaign for Lt. Governor was of stopping to talk to a young girl who called out to her when leaving a brief, one-time campaign whistle-stop in the rural heartland of the state, and how she later heard that she had carried the county… with information gained later that local sentiment was that if she could take time to speak with a child, then she would have the time to speak to them about their concerns.
Anne O’Neill
Walnut Creek, CA
a_oneill2007@yahoo.com