FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | August 26, 2020
On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a new issues- and policy-focused podcast featuring feminist analysis, insightful conversations and exciting guests. This is the first podcast from Ms. magazine, a legacy feminist publication.
In each bi-weekly episode, host Dr. Michele Goodwin and special guests will tackle the most compelling issues of our times, centering feminist concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality.
A new episode—19th Amendment: Suffrage and the Power of Women’s Votes—is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and MsMagazine.com.
Today, August 26th is Women’s Equality Day, marking 100 years since the 19th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution. In our special episode, Dr. Goodwin and her guests took a deep dive into the fraught and complex history of the women’s suffrage movement, to help listeners understand the power and promise of the women’s vote—and where we go from here.
Dr. Goodwin was joined this week by Melanie Campbell, executive director and CEO for the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable Intergenerational Public Policy Network, and Sally Roesch Wagner, writer, historian and director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation.
Their conversation covered a wide range of topics; you can find a full transcript here, as well as a few excerpts below:
“Breaking that glass ceiling is more than symbolic… We know that as women we are the majority vote, but yet it doesn’t reflect—not just from the top of the seat of political power, but not enough of us in the Senate, not enough of us in the House, not enough governors. I think the issue of race and gender breaking those barriers will carry women to our rightful place. I believe it’s our time… Black women are owning our power unapologetically.” —Melanie Campbell, executive director & CEO for the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation
“The silver lining for me is that we are perhaps, as a nation, taking a look at, ‘Where really does leadership come from?’ And leadership no longer can come from above. Boy, we are getting a perfect example of when you have a rich, white, straight man who can’t see beyond his own nose… People who understand most the issues that we need to be dealing with are people that are at the bottom of the power structure, and I think we’re beginning to understand in this moment that’s where leadership has to come from.” —Sally Roesch Wagner, writer, historian & director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation
“The suffrage movement should have and could have supported African American men in voting, could’ve supported immigrant men in voting, could’ve worked against voter suppression laws, instead of working in the states—and especially in the South—for voter suppression laws… They may have won the battle to put [women’s suffrage] in the Constitution, but they lost the war for freedom.” —Sally Roesch Wagner, writer, historian & director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation
“When I think of this 100th anniversary, I immediately think about what happened from then to 1965 because our history and fighting for the right to vote never stopped, before that and even into today. So when you talk to Black women of today—especially younger black women—they really don’t get why we’re even commemorating this moment about the women’s right to vote.” —Melanie Campbell, executive director & CEO for the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation
Meet the Host of On the Issues: Dr. Michele Goodwin is a frequent contributor to Ms. magazine and on MsMagazine.com. She is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and also serves on the executive committee and national board of the ACLU. Dr. Goodwin is a prolific author and an elected member of the American Law Institute, as well as an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Hastings Center. Her most recent book, Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood, is described as a “must read.”
About Ms. Magazine: Co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1972 and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation since 2001, Ms. magazine has been a trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online for nearly 50 years. Ms.’s time-honored traditions of an emphasis on in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis have never been more relevant, bringing a new generation of writers and readers together to create the feminism of the future.
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If you would like more information on the On the Issues with Michele Goodwin podcast, or to schedule an interview with Host Michele Goodwin or Executive Producer & Ms. Executive Editor Katherine Spillar, please email Maddy Pontz at press@msmagazine.com.
Launched in 1971, Ms. is the most trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online with a tradition of in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis. Ms. is wholly owned and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation.
