I never thought of myself as a political person. I say that after writing two letters this morning. One to Jason Copping because the Alberta government passed legislature that let them take over the pension fund management of the Alberta Teacher’s Association. The other letter, I wrote to him as well, but I wasn’t astute enough at the time to put copies in to other people in the legislature. At any rate, it was a simple letter, decrying the dismantling of the health system we have in place – right now by breaking the contract they have with doctors in Alberta and trying to pass other legislation.
I was wondering why, this morning, I wasn’t feeling political.
When I was taking classes for the Women’s Studies degree, I enrolled in one called Women in Politics.
At the end of the class, the teacher had us go around the circle and say something that they had learned in the class.
I said, “I didn’t know that women had a place in politics, other than the one that a few women have been elected to.
Now that I have listened to all that has been said here, I believe I have a voice in the political system and can use it.” Barbara Crow said that feeling is the one she hoped everyone in the class would have.
I don’t know exactly what I believed being political was. There seemed to be something out there that others did, that I didn’t do – and that was being political. But I have always known how to pick up a pen and write to my MLA, and later to use a word processor to do it, and then the joy of email and sending multiple copies, here and there.
I have had two moments where I felt political in a quiet way.
One of them was when I was working at the University of Calgary and discovered the library held papers having to do with the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.
I went to the stacks at my lunch hour and would take boxes of papers down and sit and read them.
Dusty paper, not in binders or in sleeve jackets.
Some held together with a simple staple.
But to me those papers were like peeling back a curtain and seeing what other women across Canada had been experiencing and what they wanted to tell their government. Brave women.
I had a complimentary experience one year when it was Rebecca’s birthday. I asked her what she was going to do for it, and she said, “I am going downtown to listen to the Royal Commission on Reproductive Technologies.” Asking if I could join her, she agreed, seeming like a double hit of happiness for me – her company and my government gathering information.
I can see that room in my mind’s eye. The farm women coming to tell about reproductive technology does to their animals, some of the udders on the cows hanging so low they almost brushed the ground. Rebecca and I met a Calgary activist there. I have told that story elsewhere. For the moment, just sufficient for me to say that some of my happiest memories can be grouped around the idea of women becoming political.
Arta
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| National Action Committee on the Status of Women |
When I was taking classes for the Women’s Studies degree, I enrolled in one called Women in Politics.
At the end of the class, the teacher had us go around the circle and say something that they had learned in the class.
I said, “I didn’t know that women had a place in politics, other than the one that a few women have been elected to.
Now that I have listened to all that has been said here, I believe I have a voice in the political system and can use it.” Barbara Crow said that feeling is the one she hoped everyone in the class would have.
I don’t know exactly what I believed being political was. There seemed to be something out there that others did, that I didn’t do – and that was being political. But I have always known how to pick up a pen and write to my MLA, and later to use a word processor to do it, and then the joy of email and sending multiple copies, here and there.
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| (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-135131) Florence Bayard Bird, commissioner for Council on the Status of Women, Ottawa |
One of them was when I was working at the University of Calgary and discovered the library held papers having to do with the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.
I went to the stacks at my lunch hour and would take boxes of papers down and sit and read them.
Dusty paper, not in binders or in sleeve jackets.
Some held together with a simple staple.
But to me those papers were like peeling back a curtain and seeing what other women across Canada had been experiencing and what they wanted to tell their government. Brave women.
I had a complimentary experience one year when it was Rebecca’s birthday. I asked her what she was going to do for it, and she said, “I am going downtown to listen to the Royal Commission on Reproductive Technologies.” Asking if I could join her, she agreed, seeming like a double hit of happiness for me – her company and my government gathering information.
I can see that room in my mind’s eye. The farm women coming to tell about reproductive technology does to their animals, some of the udders on the cows hanging so low they almost brushed the ground. Rebecca and I met a Calgary activist there. I have told that story elsewhere. For the moment, just sufficient for me to say that some of my happiest memories can be grouped around the idea of women becoming political.
Arta
We have had some right strange experiences. :-). Somehow, I remember that as YOU choosing to go and me following....hahaah. that was quite an event. I can't believe we actually did that with eachother.
ReplyDeleteThat was a day to remember. Elsewhere I have written about the woman who came to us and asked us what we were going to do for lunch. We had a couple of peanut butter and banana sandwiches and a few home-made rice krispie bars. Just what we had grabbed out of the kitchen. We told her to share our lunch with us and sit on a bench and talk in the sun during the lunch hour. She said no. She grabbed something from a deli and joined us.
DeleteThat was a fascinating hour. Her husband was a wealthy professional. But she could still remember her own humble Saskatchewan farm childhood. She had been instrumental in work with a birth control clinic. Then with STD's and venereal disease clinics. And then in establishing outreach during the AIDS crisis.
Do you remember?
She said that on the phone, people would call in to find out their test results and when she would tell them they had an STD, they would say to her. "Thank God!" After she heard this enough times, she knew there was something out there worse than an STD, and she went out to find ways to help those people. Those were the days when AIDS didn't have the meds that they do now.
That was some lunch hour, Rebecca. I wonder how much of that I captured in my personal memoirs. I don't think I caught all of the vignettes that still linger in my mind about that time.
One act I didn't imagine would ever happen in my lifetime was me sending in an absentee ballot to the US to vote for a woman for President. That felt political. It also felt political eight years before that, voting for the first African American to become President of the US.
ReplyDeleteTonight I am thinking about some of your vocal political actions, Arta. Do you have a photo of your long white hair teased up to the heavens with a protest sign that said that the action you were protesting was hair raising? I wasn't there, but in my minds eye I can see you clearly.
That photo was published in the union newspaper. I had forgotten about doing that. What I really enjoyed was the look on the faces of some of the men who were in the management section of the union that day. We marched around the campus together. Later, one told me outright he had no idea I would ever do such a thing. I presented another face at the union meetings -- my more dignified self.
ReplyDeleteI remember you taking me to my first Take Back the Night March. I don't know what year that would have been. I feel like maybe I was in grade 8 or 9. So around 1989? Does that sound right? That was probably one of my first public acts of political activism. Thanks for that. So many things that I did with you just seemed so "normal." Only in retrospect can I see there weren't so many other moms doing what you were doing.
ReplyDelete