More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Wendy Davis is an American lawyer and politician from Fort Worth, Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, Davis represented the 10th district in the Texas Senate from 2009 to 2015. On June 25, 2013, Davis held a 13-hour-long filibuster to block Senate Bill 5, a measure which included more restrictive abortion regulations for Texas. The filibuster played a major role in Senate Democrats’ success in delaying passage of the bill.
A longtime organizer reflects on Texas as both a battleground and blueprint—where the fight for economic justice, reproductive freedom, and inclusive democracy is being waged by a rising, people-powered movement.
(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund.)
State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh ground Nebraska’s legislative body to a halt for three weeks, stonewalling every bill regardless of whether she personally opposed it. In eight-hour stretches, she fulfilled the promise she made to her colleagues last month: to “make it painful” for the statehouse to target trans youth—even if it meant sleeping on the hardwood floor of her office between committee hearings.
Her use of the filibuster to keep a bill from being quietly slipped through the legislature echoes another one-woman statehouse stand from 10 years ago. Both Wendy Davis and Cavanaugh took advantage of tools available to them as the minority party in their statehouses—and used it to amplify dry procedural politics into a powerful rallying cry.
As a born-and-raised Texan, I’ve followed Wendy Davis from the night of her epic filibuster to her decision to run for governor up to Election Day. While live-streaming her be-sneakered filibuster from my Los Angeles apartment on the balmy night of June 25, 2013, I wished I could have been in the state Capitol for […]
Even mansplaining is bigger in Texas. “Mansplaining” was a New York Times Word of the Year after the publication of Rebecca Solnit’s classic essay “Men Explain Things to Me” back in 2008. Before long, the word had morphed to explain the experience of other groups who are often dismissed: whitesplaining, straightsplaining and, for those who […]
Grace Garcia, a powerful supporter of women political candidates, died Monday in a car crash outside Dallas at age 59. Garcia was instrumental in founding the National Latina Political Action Committee (PODER PAC) and advocated for abortion rights as executive director of Annie’s List, an organization that supports pro-choice, Democratic women candidates for state office in Texas. […]
The progress the feminist movement made in 2013 illuminates the progress we still need to make. In the following list, we celebrate the good of this year, and suggest where the road to equality should take us next: Women were allowed into combat this January, but the prevalence of sexual assault on the job—nearly one […]
It’s hard to not get discouraged at a time when women are still fighting for the right to control their bodies, same-sex relations are criminalized in 76 countries, rape culture and victim-blaming run rampant and women are still trafficked for sex and slave labor around the globe. However, it’s important to take a moment to […]
Here are quotes from celebrated women in 2013 that made us glow with feminist pride! It’s been a year of both triumphs and defeats for women worldwide, but one thing for certain is that there are lots of inspiring women who will never give up the fight. I have a daughter and I have granddaughters […]
This year, feminists have a lot to be thankful for, so we jotted down a top 12 list of reasons to be grateful. (Add your own in the comments section below.) In between forkfuls tomorrow, let’s give some shout-outs for all the people who inspired us and all that we’ve accomplished in 2013! 1) We’re […]
At the eleventh hour–a day before dozens of abortion clinics were going to be forced to close in Texas–a federal judge ruled that some of the state’s harsh new abortion restrictions were unconstitutional. While Gov. Rick Perry undercut Wendy Davis’ nearly 13-hour filibuster against a draconian anti-abortion bill in June by passing it in a […]