A fellow urban Mama recently suggested that Judith Stadtman Tucker, founder and editor of the Mothers Movement Online, is a well-informed, plugged in, inspirational player in this movement we've joined. So I visited the MMO web site and came across Ms. Tucker's "motherhood papers" - what she describes as "random dispatches on motherhood, culture and politics." Wow. I was amazed at how much I identified with her own experience with motherhood in our culture, as well as her take on the problems families face in America today. I especially identified with her 2005 piece, "Motherhood Made Me Do It! or How I Became an Activist," some of which is excerpted below. It is right on target for us Activistas, I think, and worth some thought vis-a-vis our burgeoning group. Does it resonate for you? How can we use her thoughts and hard work in our own efforts to organize and effect change?
She wrote:
"The immediate task at hand is how to move ideas into action. We've defined the motherhood problem pretty well. We know what it looks like in women's lives, and for the most part, we know which policy solutions are called for. The momentum for change is growing. So how do we breathe life into the mothers' movement?
There is really no great mystery about what goes into effective organizing. Vision and impassioned leadership are only a small part of social activism (some argue they are the most important part, but I'm not convinced that's true.) Effective organizing can take many forms, but it almost always involves funding, strategic planning, outreach, communication, coordination, and forming supportive partnerships with other organizations and community groups with compatible goals. This is the long, unglamorous slog of making social change. It doesn't have the feel-good buzz of donating clothing and supplies to the local homeless shelter, or volunteering to answer phones for a domestic violence hotline, or putting together a fundraising event to help families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Effective organizing is not always fast or pretty, but it works.
The other piece of successful social movements is consciousness raising. Consciousness raising is what gets the message out and engages individual supporters where they live. And with mothers' issues, this can be very tricky. Motherhood is such an ideologically loaded topic that it's easy for open discussions to get off track. At the same time, consciousness raising only works when people have an opportunity to connect their personal stories to the bigger picture. As soon as possible, we need to figure out a better and quicker way to help women start the conversation about the motherhood problem -- and what to do about it -- in their own communities. This is not an insurmountable task. We have many inexpensive yet highly sophisticated communication tools at our disposal. We have a selection of good models. Expert knowledge is available. We just need enough people with ideas and relevant skills to make the commitment and make it happen.
But then, this work isn't about me, or my ideas -- I'm just a channel, an incubator. This work is about us -- mothers -- and the future of our sons and daughters and the well-being of America's workers and families. It's about laying the groundwork for a caring society -- the next New Deal. Above all, it's about social justice. If we want a mothers' movement, we will have to do the work. We have to give birth to it." Read the whole article.
She thinks big, but then, we have to, don't we?
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