31 Days of Notable Women- Margaret Heckler, freedom fighter

Margaret Mary O’Shaughnessy Heckler (born June 21, 1931), Republican politician from Massachusetts served in the United States House of Representatives for eight terms, from 1967 until 1983. She became the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Ambassador to Ireland under President Ronald Reagan. She was an ardent advocate of women’s rights and the ERA.

Source: http://womenincongress.house.gov/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=104

31 Days of Notable Women- Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukrainian Prime Minister

Yulia Tymoshenko, the charismatic Orange Revolution heroine, served as prime minister and was running for president of the Ukraine, fell in love with the white tiger, Tigryulia, and made the animal a key image of her campaign. Afterward, Tigryulia was placed in the Yalta zoo and a Tymoshenko ally brought in the Bengal tiger, Patrice, from France to keep her company, but the two didn’t hit it off at first. Tymoshenko lost the 2010 presidential election to her longtime foe, the Orange Revolution nemesis President Viktor Yanukovych, and was sentenced to seven years in prison in October on charges of abuse of office. The trial was condemned by the West as politically motivated.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/yulia-tymoshenkos-tigress-cubs_n_1508900.html

31 Days of Notable Women-Carmen Mary Lawrence, Australia’s first Premier

“We all construct world views that give us a sense of meaning. Mostly it is about belonging to a group and having a sense of identity and purpose.” – Carmen Lawrence

Carmen Mary Lawrence (born March 2, 1948) is a retired Australian politician; a former Premier of Western Australia and the first woman to become Premier of a State of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Lawrence

31 Days of Notable Women-Flonzie Brown-Wright, author and lecturer

Flonzie (Goodloe) Brown-Wright became the first black woman to be elected County registrar. She is now an author and lecturer.

She appeared in the movie “STANDING ON MY SISTERS’ SHOULDERS”, a powerful documentary that reveals a missing chapter in our nation’s record of the Civil Rights movement. It depicts the movement in Mississippi during the 1950 and 60s from the point of view of the courageous women who lived it and emerged as its grassroots leaders. Their living testimony offers a window into a unique moment when the founders’ promise of freedom and justice passed from rhetoric to reality for all Americans. A film every American should see and never forget.

Source: http://www.sisters-shoulders.org/heroines.html

31 Days of Notable Women-Unita Blackwell, Women’s Freedom Fighter

“STANDING ON MY SISTERS’ SHOULDERS”  is a powerful documentary that reveals a missing chapter in our nation’s record of the Civil Rights movement. It depicts the movement in Mississippi during the 1950 and 60s from the point of view of the courageous women who lived it and emerged as its grassroots leaders. Their living testimony offers a window into a unique moment when the founders’ promise of freedom and justice passed from rhetoric to reality for all Americans. A film every American should see and never forget.

In the film you will meet Unita Blackwell, a sharecropper who rose to become Mississippi’s first black woman Mayor. During the Civil Rights movement, she worked for voting rights, and was arrested over 75 times, facing firebombs and burning crosses.

Source: http://www.sisters-shoulders.org/heroines.html

We can break the two party system, Vote GREEN!

Did you know that there are 133 Green officeholders as of Thursday, May 10, 2012?

For more information on truly alternative choices for political office visit The Green Party at: http://www.gp.org/index.php

There are two women and a Native American man running for President in 2012, so if you want to support the environment and help break the two party system, consider voting GREEN!

Energetically, Diane Tegarden

31 Days of Notable Women- Mary Schapiro, Securities & Exchange Commission

Mary Schapiro, the current Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, resides in Washington,DC. Her educational background is as follows: BA/BS from Franklin & Marshall College; JD from George Washington University.

Schapiro has spent much of the year trying to overcome the results of past lax regulatory enforcement. From excavating the Bernie Madoff fraud to investigating the ratings agencies’ possible role in the financial crisis, Schapiro is striving to bring order to the most important financial-regulatory house in the world. Most recently she enjoyed a victory: the passage of a long-sought, though somewhat controversial, rule that allows shareholders to have influence over the makeup of a public company’s board of directors.

Source cited: http://www.forbes.com/profile/mary-schapiro

31 Days of Notable Women- Janet Napolitano, woman of many firsts

Janet Napolitano is a woman of many “firsts”, as the current Head of Homeland Security, she resides in Washington, DC. Her educational background includes a BA/BS from Santa Clara University; and a JD from the University of Virginia. Her term as governor of Arizona (yes, she was the first woman) gives her special insight into the escalating, gory drug war on the Mexican-U.S. border and the American public’s strident disagreements over immigration reform–most notably the Arizona law aimed at identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants.

As the country’s first female head of the Department of Homeland Security,  she’s had to deal with several tough, high-profile cases, among them the near-miss bombing on Times Square and a Nigerian national’s Christmas Day effort to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner. 

Source cited: http://www.forbes.com/profile/janet-napolitano

31 Days of Notable Women- Ellen Sirleaf, first African female head of state

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 29 October 1938) is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d’état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a very distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She successfully ran for re-election in 2011. Sirleaf is the first and currently the only elected female head of state in Africa.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Johnson_Sirleaf

31 Days of Notable Women- Frances Perkins, first woman to serve on a presidential cabinet

Fannie Coralie Perkins was born in Boston in 1880 and quickly realized that her life would be based around helping others. Perkins, who later changed her name to Frances, worked with Jane Addams at the Hull House in Chicago and later worked for the Tammany Hall political machine and then-governor of New York, Al Smith.

However, it was a coincidental incident that made Perkins become so passionate about workplace reform. In 1910, Perkins was eating lunch in Greenwich Village when she heard the alarm bells at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. From this moment on, Perkins dedicated her life to reforming workplace conditions.

In 1933, FDR appointed Perkins to Secretary of Labor, making her the first female to serve in a presidential cabinet. Although Downey pointed out that this achievement was monumental, she insisted that Perkins is still “one of the least-known, most important social progressives in history.”

Perkins continued to rise in fame, as she was involved in an enormous expansion of government and regulations as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. She championed the establishment of a minimum wage and a social security program for all workers.

Source cited: http://cornellsun.com/print/35946