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Protests

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Collection
Collage of line drawings of women and Iran on tan patterned background

For Iranian Women Who Break the Laws About Their Dress

Talia Waxman

Could the solidarity that Iranians have shown towards Israelis and that Israeli women have shown towards Iranian women be the beginning of peace between the two nations?

Episode 101: The Women's War Room

Israel has been at war with Hamas for nearly a month. Israeli and Palestinian casualties are devastating–and mounting. In Israel, women are on the front lines of a major grassroots mobilization: providing emergency relief to a country in crisis. An army of volunteers of all ages and genders has stepped in to organize clothing, food, and housing for displaced Israelis; students and therapists are working with traumatized kids; and programmers are building apps to connect people with services. Many of these efforts have emerged from organizations that originally formed to protest the Netanyahu government's proposed judicial reforms. They’ve now shifted gears to respond to the current crisis in Israel. In this episode, we speak with Lee Hoffman Agiv, Field Operations Manager of the feminist organization Bonot Alternativa (Building an Alternative), who’s coordinating efforts from Bonot’s “war room.”

Episode 100: Missing Vivian Silver

Vivian Silver has been missing since October 7, the day Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,400 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages to Gaza. Since then, more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israel's air strikes in Gaza. Vivian is 74 years old, from Kibbutz Be’eri, on the Gaza border. In this episode, we speak with her friend Ariella Giniger, who was in touch with Vivian as Hamas terrorists entered her house on the morning of October 7.  We’ll also hear parts of our 2017 interview with Vivian, an active member of Women Wage Peace, a movement of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women demanding a peaceful solution to the conflict.
(Postscript: On November 13, Vivian Silver was declared dead after her remains were found at her home. May her memory be a blessing.) 

Judith Wright

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Judith Wright on July 25, 2000, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project, Wright discusses her family, Jewish identity, political activism, involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, incarceration during the Freedom Rides, and her continued engagement in various causes, including women's rights and antiwar activities.

Anna Charny

Project
Soviet Jewry

Gabriel Weinstein Tamar interviewed Anna Charny in Massachusetts as part of the Soviet Jewry Oral History Project. Charny shares her experiences growing up in Moscow, encountering antisemitism, becoming a refusenik, and eventually immigrating to the United States, highlighting her family's Jewish identity, her activism, and the challenges of assimilating into a new country.

Episode 91: Israel at 75: Voices of Protest

Israel turns 75 this week. This milestone comes at a moment of unprecedented upheaval in Israeli society and escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Over the past few months, around 1.5 million Israelis have poured into the streets to protest the judicial reforms proposed by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government, which would weaken the power of the Supreme Court.

In this episode of Can We Talk?, we'll hear four Jewish Israeli women from diverse backgrounds reflect on how the country arrived at this tumultuous moment. They'll talk about their hopes and fears for the country, and what the protests have meant to them.

Galina Nizhnikov

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Galina Nizhnikov in Peabody, Massachusetts on January 12, 2003, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Nizhnikov talks about her upbringing in Russia, her family's Jewish pride, experiences with workplace antisemitism, involvement with refuseniks, the decision to leave Russia, and the struggles they faced to secure their departure.

Madalyn Schenk

Project
Women Who Dared

Abe Louise Young interviewed Madalyn Schenk on January 11, 2005, in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Schenk discusses her journey as an activist, starting with her involvement in the National Council of Jewish Women, her work in building economic partnerships between the US and Israel, organizing the first pro-choice rally in Louisiana, and her contributions to political campaigns supporting pro-choice and women politicians.

Collage of band Sleater-Kinney on red background

Get Angry: Carrie Brownstein and the Legacy of Riot Grrrl

Ava Weinstein

Judaism’s core teachings of tikkun olam, social justice, and equality are what the riot grrrl movement was all about. Sleater-Kinney is no different.

Topics: Music, Feminism, Protests
Collage of various images of Emma Goldman on green background

Emma Goldman and A Jewish Approach to Liberation

Miriam Stodolsky

Goldman drew upon her Judaism as a source of radical moral guidance and held fiercely to her Jewishness without limiting herself to it.

Collage of Bessie Hillman on orange and yellow patterned background

Lessons on the Labor Movement from Bessie Hillman

Nora Auburn

No one figure serves as the champion of the early 20th-century union movement, but Bessie Abramowitz Hillman comes close.

Madalyn Schenk

Project
Katrina's Jewish Voices

Rosalind Hinton interviewed Madalyn Schenk on July 25, 2006, in New Orleans, Louisiana, as part of the Katrina's Jewish Voices Oral History Project. Schenk talks about her upbringing in a tight-knit Jewish community in Chicago, her move to New Orleans, her leadership during Hurricane Katrina, and her involvement in civic organizations and fundraising for the city's rebuilding efforts, as well as her approach to Jewish identity through activism.

Sally Mack

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Sally Mack on August 3, 2000, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Mack discusses her Orthodox Jewish upbringing, her transition into social activism, including her arrest for protesting, and the connection she finds between activism and spirituality in Jewish communities.

Vivienne Shub

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Elaine Eff interviewed Vivienne Shub on September 4, 2001, in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project. Shub talks about her family background, her parents' activism, her journey as an actress, founding Center Stage in Baltimore, her involvement in cultural and political movements, her love for Jewish and Yiddish culture, and reflections on various aspects of her life and career.

Two women stand at a booth with a sign that says "Abortion Pills"

This Tisha B’Av, I’m Mourning the Loss of Reproductive Rights

Steph Black

This year, I’ll use the holiday centered on mourning to process my grief for all we’ve lost.

Larisa Klebe at an Abortion Rights Rally

The Last Legal Abortion in Missouri

Larisa Klebe

The fall of Roe dealt a final blow to an already bleak abortion rights landscape. Here’s how we can turn things around. 

Ruth Zakarin, a community organizer, and her daughter at a March For Our Lives rally in Boston.

Watching with Pride and Sadness as a New Generation Takes up the Fight

Ruth Zakarin

I’m proud that my children are fighting for gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But I wish they didn’t have to.

Abortion rights demonstrators hold signs outside US Supreme Court after leaked SCOTUS opinion.

We Must Take a Page from Jewish Reproductive Justice Activists and Continue the Fight

Betsy More

There are as many different ways of working for reproductive justice as there are people.

Sonja Schlesin

Sonja Schlesin was one of Gandhi's most trusted and important associates during the period when he was a young lawyer in South Africa. She rose from becoming his secretary in 1906 to playing a major role in the large nonviolent demonstrations and protest marches of 1913, which he organized on behalf of the immigrant Indian community.

Gun Control Activist Naomi Wadler Speaks at March for Our Lives Rally

March 24, 2018

On March 24, 2018, eleven-year-old gun rights activist Naomi Wadler spoke at the national March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. The second-youngest speaker at the rally, she made an impassioned plea on behalf of Black women, who are disproportionately affected by gun violence.

Collage with Image of Alix Kates Shulman at Miss America Protest at "Freedom Trash Can"

Protest Social Media's Beauty Standards in the Name of the Freedom Trash Can

Mallie Lifsitz

It’s undeniable that our current beauty standards are unattainable. I think that contemporary activists can learn from Alix Kates Shulman’s approach to this issue.

Topics: Feminism, Protests, Media
Israelis  protest rising housing prices in 2011

This Digital Archive Will Be a Road Map for Activists

Mirushe "Mira" Zylali

As they scour the archive, activists will see they’re not alone.

Topics: Protests, Israel

Lorna Lippmann

Lorna Lippmann (1921-2004) was an Australian researcher and educator who devoted much of her life to the promotion of Aboriginal rights. She was an activist, academic researcher, author, government advisor, and community relations practitioner.  Aboriginal leaders praised her pioneering contributions.

Judith Heumann

Judith (“Judy”) E. Heumann, a founder of the disability rights movement, is an internationally acclaimed leader of the disability community. Based in Washington, D.C., Heumann has been instrumental in the development and implementation of disability rights legislation.

Alix Kates Shulman

Alix Kates Shulman is a radical feminist writer and activist and a leader in the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s through 1980s.  She is best known as the author of “The Marriage Agreement” (1970) and the best-selling Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972), which was heralded as the “first important novel of the Women’s Liberation movement.” She was honored with a Clara Lemlich Award for a lifetime of social activism in 2018.

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