In 2010, I participated with other members of the Brandeis Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, a chapter of the nationwide Feminist Majority Foundation, in one of their campus campaigns listed below: going undercover to crisis pregnancy centers to see what advice they would give to potentially pregnant college students. Some students’ experiences were covered in the Brandeis Hoot by the illustrious Bret Matthew.
The Feminist Majority Foundation Campus Team is a branch of the FMF which organizes about 500 campus groups nationwide. Brandeis’ Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, started in 2001, is one of these chapters.
In the following excerpts from FMF’s e-mail, they list problems facing feminists and women across the country and suggest some campus campaigns to help. What are your reactions? Do any of these campaigns strike you as interesting, questionable, or promising?
Some representatives from the federal, state, and local levels have waged what feminists are calling a “War on Women”. From massive cuts to family planning services to cuts in Medicaid and Medicare to enacting restrictive laws to suppress the student vote, the war on women is ever present.
Nine states including Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Texas, Washington State, and Wisconsin have made significant cuts to family planning. Even worse, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie eliminated ALL family planning funding in his state budget.
In addition, seventeen states have passed laws to restrict abortion and/or birth control services to women and thirteen states have passed some form of voter ID law to disenfranchise the student vote.
We currently have five campaigns that you and your FMLA or affiliate can take to your campus. The campaign toolkits are a guide to help organize your FMLA/affiliate around these issues.
You can use the Birth Control Access campaign to alert students to the need to stop the massive cuts to family planning; the Exposing Fake Clinics Campaign to stop Crisis Pregnancy Centers from falsely advertising their services and taking away many young women’s rights to choose; Adopt-a-Clinic campaign to support the clinic in your college community; the Get Out Her Vote (GOHV) 2012 campaign to register students on your campus to vote and get them to the polls on election day; and Global Reproductive Health campaign to support women worldwide in the fight for reproductive justice.
Finally, check out our BLOG and Facebook pages! If you are interested in writing for our blog, please email us at campusteam@feminist.org. We have Facebook pages for each of our regions: Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northeast, Southern, and Western. There is also a Women of Color Facebook page for women of color on HBCU and predominately white campuses. Please have your members “Ask to Join” their respective groups!