Pointing out stories you may have missed. This report by Holly Yeager at Times Online caught my attention and if you read on you'll see exactly why. It ran with the headline `Together We're Strong' and the introduction ``American mothers lag behind the rest of the world in childcare provision, but a new internet-based pressure group is leading a spirited fightback''.They have been angry before. But now they are taking to the streets and speaking out in numbers not seen in decades: American mothers are on the march.
Take Jenny Kaleczyc, a Montana lawyer and mother of two. Last month she went to Helena, the state capital, to demand that state and local governments provide unpaid break time for mothers to pump breast milk - and somewhere other than a toilet cubicle to pump it in.
Erin Faunce-Stoltzfus set off with her two young sons on a two-hour car ride from her home in Pennsylvania to Washington one recent morning to join a rally demanding paid sick days for workers across the US. She wasn’t alone.
More than 17,000 women sent messages to their US senators supporting the legislation. The direct action has been ignited by MomsRising, a new internet-based group that is bringing fresh energy to long-fought battles over childcare, healthcare, sex discrimination and other issues.
“This is about feeling powerful and knowing that together we can make a difference,” says Joan Blades, a mother of two who co-founded the group last May.
Blades helped to start MoveOn.org, the left-wing political group that used the internet to build a grass-roots movement and activate millions of voters, and she hopes to do the same for mothers, making it easier to sign petitions, send emails, organise demonstrations and learn about issues. “The telephone on steroids, I sometimes call it.”
MomsRising has quickly grown to more than 80,000 members and Blades thinks it could reach one million - or even more.
News source: Times Online.
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