Sister Giant – Letting the Voices of Women Be Heard

Thirteen hundred women (and a few men) gathered in the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills this past weekend to start a revolution in America.  The theater echoed with radical ideas that could change American culture and politics forever - ideas like: the elimination of child poverty, exorbitantly high incarceration rates and the political stronghold created by Citizens United.  This revolution is inevitable if America is to survive as a democracy, but how will it take place?  Not with guns and ammo, hostility and bipartisan blockades.  No, this revolution will take place through the power of women who will stand together to change America. What does this have to do with motherhood?  The way we move forward as a nation has everything to do with our ability to raise our children to embrace a safe and prosperous future.

Sister Giant gathered people from all political parties who were interested in changing the way politics currently influences our lives and America’s place in the world.  It was inspired by author, teacher, and renowned spiritualist, Marianne Williamson, who believes women’s natural inclinations toward inclusion, nurturing and creating relationships along with our innate sensitivity and spirituality are critical to changing a political process that’s veered radically off course. Williamson proposes that because women’s voices are not adequately represented, American politics now operates of corporations, by corporations and for corporations. 

The American population consists of 51%  women, who are represented by an 80% male government. Sister Giant posed these questions:

* What if women were fairly represented?

* Would women:

• allow 16.1 million American children to go to bed hungry, to live in desperate poverty and in conditions that contribute to child abuse? 
• allow our education systems to be increasingly underfunded? 
• incarcerate our citizens at the highest rates in the world? 
• allow large corporations to dominate our elections? 
• spend more on military defense than all other developed nations combined and less on education, healthcare and child welfare?

The question of What Would Women Do was explored in depth by speakers like: 

• Author/Lecturer Charlene Spretnak, who discussed research that supports relational models in all fields of study including science, medicine, education and politics.  While relationships and the interconnectivity of all things are obvious to most women, they’re brand new ideas to many men who see the world as divided into distinct entities that operate separately from each other. 

• Adam Winkler talked about the social impact of the 2010 Supreme Court decision that reversed decades of case law in the Citizens United case and allowed corporations to spend unlimited funds to influence our elections.

A wide variety of bipartisan speakers discussed child poverty, child abuse, poor quality education and our government’s apathy toward improving children’s living conditions. An afternoon session led by Sarah Jane Rose, one of the creators of Sally’s List, described how her organization recruits and trains progressive women to run for the Oklahoma State Legislature.  One Sally’s List candidate, Marilyn Rainwater, recently ran for the Oklahoma State House of Representatives.  Though ultimately Rainwater did not win her campaign, she talked about what motivated her to run and her history as a child protective services case worker in America’s worst state for child abuse statistics.  Her speech was so inspiring that almost every woman in the Saban Theater spontaneously donated money to finance her next campaign.

Sister Giant culminated with a mini-training session conducted by the Yale Campaign School for Women on why women must get more directly involved in the political process and included tips on how to run a campaign, give compelling speeches and create a positivity team to help women withstand the often brutal campaign culture. 

The whole event was spiked with comedy, dance and musical performances and spiritual discussions led by Williamson and ultimately delivered this challenge:  More women must run for office in all levels of government whether that’s for school board, city council, state legislature, the Senate, Congress, as Vice President or President.   Only when women are fairly represented, will the focus of our country be on people, not profits so that once again, the words of Abraham Lincoln will ring true: That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.