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Laura Bush to Receive Alice Paul Award??
Is Laura Bush feminist enough for Alice Paul Award?
By Annie Groer
Does former first lady Laura Bush possess the feminist cred and chops to receive a prize named for one of America’s most militant suffragists —who for years was heckled, jailed and even force-fed during a prison hunger strike to win the vote for women in 1920?
Depends whom you ask about the Alice Paul Award, which the board of the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum will give to Laura Bush in September. Since 1929, this Capitol Hill landmark has been home to the National Woman’s Party, and occasionally, to Paul herself.
One of the most vocal Bush-bashers is Sonia Pressman Fuentes, 84, who spent nearly two decades on the Sewall-Belmont board and co-founded the National Organization For Women. Now living in Sarasota, she said by phone that she helped draft a protest letter signed by more than 20 women because people were “stunned” by the selection.
“Laura Bush is not known as a champion of women’s rights. She has done little or nothing to advance American women’s equality,” the letter contended. “Her advocacy on behalf of Afghan women is commendable, but she has been conspicuously absent in every major arena of American women’s rights. Nor has she challenged her party’s anti-feminist agenda in any meaningful way. To give the Alice Award to such a partisan political figure in an election year is highly questionable. To give it to a non-feminist Republican figurehead, at a time when the Republican Party is doing its utmost to demolish women’s hard-fought rights, reflects a stunning lapse of judgment.”
By Annie Groer
Does former first lady Laura Bush possess the feminist cred and chops to receive a prize named for one of America’s most militant suffragists —who for years was heckled, jailed and even force-fed during a prison hunger strike to win the vote for women in 1920?
Depends whom you ask about the Alice Paul Award, which the board of the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum will give to Laura Bush in September. Since 1929, this Capitol Hill landmark has been home to the National Woman’s Party, and occasionally, to Paul herself.
One of the most vocal Bush-bashers is Sonia Pressman Fuentes, 84, who spent nearly two decades on the Sewall-Belmont board and co-founded the National Organization For Women. Now living in Sarasota, she said by phone that she helped draft a protest letter signed by more than 20 women because people were “stunned” by the selection.
“Laura Bush is not known as a champion of women’s rights. She has done little or nothing to advance American women’s equality,” the letter contended. “Her advocacy on behalf of Afghan women is commendable, but she has been conspicuously absent in every major arena of American women’s rights. Nor has she challenged her party’s anti-feminist agenda in any meaningful way. To give the Alice Award to such a partisan political figure in an election year is highly questionable. To give it to a non-feminist Republican figurehead, at a time when the Republican Party is doing its utmost to demolish women’s hard-fought rights, reflects a stunning lapse of judgment.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/is-laura-bush-feminist-enough-for-alice-paul-award/2012/06/18/gJQA6hJGmV_blog.html
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