{"id":1491,"date":"2008-08-01T07:47:26","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T07:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/01\/blogher-bella-b\/"},"modified":"2008-08-01T07:47:26","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T07:47:26","slug":"blogher-bella-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/01\/blogher-bella-b\/","title":{"rendered":"BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bella_bw1_2\"<\/a> Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women.  You know where; the Web has been full of posts<\/a> and tweets and messages about BlogHer<\/a>, the women<\/a> bloggers<\/a> conference.  Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them.  For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it.  Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age.  I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward.  In many ways, we made a difference.  I’m proud of that. <\/p>\n

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books<\/a>: Ruth Rosen<\/a>‘s review of  Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
\nJim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
\nRights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
\nthe Way<\/span><\/em>–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug<\/a>.  Among other things, Ruth says:<\/p>\n

She fought for the
\nrights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
\nbomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women\u2019s rights, and
\nspent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
\nWhen she plunged into the women\u2019s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
\nfeminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
\nFerraro reminds us,
\nShe didn\u2019t knock lightly on the door. She didn\u2019t even push it open or batter it
\ndown. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
\ncould walk through! <\/em>
\n\n<\/p>\n

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have.  It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
\nfogey.   Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
\nbattles in Bella\u2019s story and in many of our own."<\/p>\n

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope.  And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy.  And that Bella would have loved them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women.  You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference.  Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them.  For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength … Continue reading BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3,4,27,7,9,52,29],"tags":[1350,196,198,1353,1354,48,1293,90,21,1351,1355,44,197,1352,729],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-politics","category-weblogs","category-women","tag-bella-abzug","tag-bloggers","tag-blogher","tag-book","tag-book-review","tag-feminism","tag-feminists","tag-history","tag-politics-2","tag-rebellion","tag-ruth-rosen","tag-women-2","tag-women-bloggers","tag-womens-history","tag-womens-movement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-o3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2413,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}