Women’s Groups on 2020: How Can We Choose Among Warren, Klobuchar, Harris, Gillibrand and Gabbard?
(The Daily Beast)But Shaunna Thomas, executive director of women’s rights group UltraViolet, said she would be surprised if many of these organizations endorsed in the primary. UltraViolet did not endorse in 2016, and Thomas said that this year—with so many strong women candidates—there is little incentive for any women’s group to do so.
“There is all the incentive in the world for us to create the conditions for all of these candidates to continue to vie for women as a constituency and to center their needs,” she said. “I’d be shocked if women’s groups jumped in to endorse a bunch of different candidates… if for no other reason than because we need all of them to center women.”
Read the article‘Surviving R. Kelly’ makers, others react to charges
(Washington Post)“It’s past time for us to listen to and trust Black women and girls and hold those who abuse them accountable.” —Women’s rights organization Ultraviolet, via Twitter.
Read the articleQuestions surround Labor Secretary Acosta after judge’s ruling
(Washington Post)“Under Acosta’s leadership, a sexual predator and his accomplices walked away with a meager slap on the wrist,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet, a women’s advocacy organization, in a statement.
Read the articleR. Kelly Dropped by Sony Music
(Variety)Sony’s move comes after years of public calls, and even a petition from members of the #MuteRKelly movement, for the company to part ways with Kelly. Those calls intensified in the wake of Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” in which multiple women accuse him of sexual misconduct. In recent weeks a plane commissioned by the women’s organization UltraViolet and carrying a sign reading “RCA/Sony: Drop Sexual Predator R. Kelly” flew over Sony Music’s Los Angeles offices and a protest was staged outside of Sony’s New York headquarters.
Read the articleCBS board adjourns meeting without dealing with Les Moonves scandal
(USA Today)“The board of directors has all the information they need to fire him with cause and to deny him the $120 million golden parachute,” said Natalie Green of UltraViolet, an online organization dedicated to fighting sexual assault and sexism in the public and private sectors.
Read the articleConfrontational Activism—Is it Here to Stay?
(Vogue)Shaunna Thomas, the cofounder of UltraViolet, a women’s advocacy organization, vehemently disagrees [with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell]. “Until we came along,” she says, “the confirmation was a done deal.” Her six-year-old group has embraced bird-dogging as well as media-friendly gestures like flying a thank you christine banner over Christine Blasey Ford’s house in Palo Alto. UltraViolet’s activity surged during the Kavanaugh hearings, Thomas says. At Senator Susan Collins’s office in Portland, Maine, “hundreds of people started showing up. First weekly, then daily.”
Read the articleKavanaugh Protesters Show Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape Outside Capitol
(Huffington Post)UltraViolet Action, a national women’s advocacy organization, said the 2005 outtake of Trump talking about using his celebrity status to “grab them by the pussy” will air over and over for 12 hours to remind senators that the president is “a self-professed serial sexual abuser attempting to elevate another sexual abuser ― Brett Kavanaugh ― into high office.”
Read the articleAmy Schumer Among Dozens of Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters Arrested in D.C.
(Slate)Meanwhile, outside the Capitol building Thursday, a different feminist group had set up a giant screen dedicated to showing, on a loop, the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Donald Trump bragged that his fame allowed him to “grab them by the pussy.” According to Roll Call, the video will air for 12 hours.
Read the articleHow the Kavanaugh Protests Reached the National Stage
(New Yorker)When the doors to the Hart Senate Office Building opened at 7:30 a.m. last Friday, a few protesters making a final show of opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh were waiting to be let in. As they waited, a woman named Maria Gallagher, with dark hair and glasses, introduced herself to me. She told me she lived in the area and had taken the morning off from work in response to a call to action from the progressive organizations MoveOn and UltraViolet. I asked if she was planning to get arrested—many of those visiting the building that day were prepared for civil disobedience. She said “no.” She had told her employer that she would be in by noon.
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