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Sound too good to be true. Well, it's not. Those are but a few of the tasks performed by the Board of Supervisors here in York County, Virginia. Local government is the first line of attack on many community problems. Primary and secondary education, crime prevention and criminal prosecution (police, courts, jails, probation officers, juvenile justice system), fire, sewer, water, libraries, municipal hospitals, local historical societies, community centers, city parks and recreation departments, adult education, elder care (Meals on Wheels), and disability assistance name just a few. Local government gets involved in social services and welfare programs, too. School boards have the primary governmental responsibility for and a profound influence on the primary and secondary education of our children. Local government is often the testing ground for creative, innovative ideas and is most familiar with community needs. Further, local elective offices are stepping stones to higher state and federal elective and appointive offices.
State government plays an important part in our life, too. The Republican Party, dominated by conservative Christians, is within a handful of seats of taking control of both houses of the state legislature. In that event, laws will become even less progressive than at the current time. Since the state legislature elects judges for state courts, a rightward shift in the state legislature will eventually be reflected in a more conservative judiciary, as well. We can expect further legal retrenchment and less state financial support of affirmative action, reproductive rights and family planning, welfare reform, public education, and other state services of interest to women, such as, rape counseling, domestic violence prevention, child support enforcement, cultural institutions, environmental protection, consumer protection, and medical assistance.
We spend a lot of time, money, and energy trying to influence our elected officials after the election. Oft times, entree to our elected officials also depends on the amount of time, money, and campaign support that an organization has contributed to the successful candidate's election. Yet, since only 46% of York County's eligible voters voted in the 1991 local elections, our local representatives and delegates to the state legislature were chosen by 23% of eligible voters. Clearly a politically active minority can control local politics. If the radical right, a distinct minority of Virginia's voters, can control local and state government, feminists can also control Virginia politics. The side who wins is the side who gets their people to the polls. Let us control Virginia's political agenda by electing our candidates to public office.
What can you do?
Remember: the side who gets their people to the polls wins the election.
Local elections control our representation on the City Council or County Board of Supervisors and the school board. One would think that we would just jump at the chance to elect one of our own to these positions of local power. How can our political views prevail if we don't run our own candidates or support the candidates who agree with our agenda? Why don't we run our own candidates? Although it is too late to change this year's ballot, next year, let us set for ourselves the goal of running candidates for every available electoral position: every one of Virginia's House and Senate seats. And don't forget to vote; it may be the most important thing you do for Virginia's feminists in all of 1995.
Ida Husted Harper (1851 - 1931 ) began her career as a newspaper correspondent shortly after her marriage at age 20. Although her husband was a lawyer and a leftist politician, he objected to her career. This contradiction between her husband's private persona and his public persona in part contributed to Ida joining the Indiana suffrage society in 1887. Ida and her husband divorced after 19 years of marriage. Ida moved to Indianopolis, then California, to continue her career as a correspondent, supporting herself and her daughter. (Who said that single motherhood is a 20th century creation?)
In California, Husted and Susan B. Anthony worked together in support of the 1896 amendment to California's Constitution permitting woman's suffrage. Husted's forte was press and public relations. At Anthony's request, Harper moved to Rochester, N. Y. to write Anthony's official biography, the 2 volume, _Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony _(1898). A third volume appeared in 1908 after Anthony's death. They co-authored the fourth volume of _The History of Woman's Suffrage_.
Harper continued her role as press secretary and public relations officer to both Anthony and the woman's suffrage movement. Together the two women lobbied such luminaries as then President Theodore Roosevelt and Queen Victoria. When Carrie Chapman Catt resumed the presidency of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1915, Harper again spearheaded publicity, this time for the final drive for the right to vote. After the adoption of the 19th amendment, Harper returned to writing the _History_, publishing the fifth and sixth volumes in 1922. Remaining active in the American Association of University Women, Harper continued to struggle for woman's rights until her death at age 80. Ida Husted Harper was an educated, influential woman who contributed many talents and much energy to the causes of woman's suffrage and woman's rights. Harper is most often remembered today for her work on _History_.
from Doris Weatherford's _American Women's History_, Prentiss Hall, 1994
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Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
last updated September 1995
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