Activist Tips: Be Creative, Be Savvy, Make Waves

Words of Choice recently opened a new website section and posted new Activism tips --for the savvy, creative, well-informed pro-choice thinker. Under a button that says Activism, we've listed steps for people who only have a short bit of time, and those that want to get further engaged.

Activism isn't hard -- sometimes it's as easy as stocking up on information about abortion, and talking to your friends. And it's for all ages of people -- in travels across 20 states, we've met activists who are freshmen in college and who are working parents. But what is clear is that the simplest steps help break the silence and insert the goodwill that is needed to assure that women will have access to the safe medical procedure of legal abortion.

Developed with the help of Steph Herold, here are some of our suggestions. Got more? Send to wordsofchoice@mindspring.com

Activist Tips from Words of Choice

- Help your local abortion fund. Abortion funds help women without financial resources to pay for an abortion. They need help staffing hotlines, tabling at events, doing social marketing and updating websites. Find one in your area at National Network of Abortion Funds. If there's no fund in your city, consider starting one!

- Read Pro-Choice Blogs. One way to stay informed is to read feminist blogs. Here are a few to get you started.

~ Feministing.com

~ RHRealityCheck.org

~ AbortionGang.org

~ Feministe.us/blog

~ Latinainstitute.wordpress.com

~ OurBodiesOurBlog.org

~ http://wordsofChoice.blogspot.com

- Write a song, a poem, a rap. Explore your thoughts using your artistic imagination. To start, write new words to a tune you already know (sort of the karoke in reverse). Check out Lauren Zuniga's spoken word.

- Talk about abortion with your friends and family. Find tips at The Abortion Conversation Project

~Ask unassuming questions. For example, “Do you know anyone who has had an abortion in the past year?”

~Practice compassion. Every situation is unique and none of us are perfect. Be ready to listen and learn.

~Be prepared for the unexpected: people’s lives and opinions are complicated.

~Be willing to explain (gently). Stock up on basics on abortion at the National Abortion Federation and Guttmacher Institute.

- Tell your abortion story. You can do so in person or online. Try 45millionvoices.org, ImNotSorry.net, FWHC.org (feminist health centers).

- Know about pro-choice resources for friends in need.

~Pregnancy Options

~Abortion: Which Method is Right for Me?

~Emotional and Spiritual Healing After an Abortion

~The Good Women at Northlund video

- Tweet. It's an easy, instant and free way to connect with feminists and to get news. Twitter 101 helps.

- Show films. Good documentaries include: The Abortion Diaries; I Had an Abortion; Beyond the Politics of Life & Choice; 12th & Delaware; The Coat Hanger Project; From Danger to Dignity; and The Education of Shelby Knox. Some good dramas: 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days; Vera Drake; Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Citizen Ruth; The Cider House Rules; Dirty Dancing; Just Another Girl on the IRT; If These Walls Could Talk. A doc/drama mix: Words of Choice on DVD.

- Use creativity. Engage people’s right brains. See “Creativity Up,” the Words of Choice blog and info packaged with our DVD. Some ideas:

~Make an event display from abortion rights posters.

~Knit condom amulets.

~Make a Flip film for YouTube about your reproductive rights & the obstacles to free exercise of them.

~Write letters to the new justices on the Supreme Court about the need for abortion.

~Post the pro-choice prayers of FaithAloud.

- Expand your thinking. Good books on abortion providers: The Story of Jane: The Legendary Feminist Underground Abortion Service; This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor and Targets of Hatred. For the history of abortion politics, try Doctors of Conscience by Carole Joffe; Roe v Wade by Marian Faux and The Choices We Made by Angela Bonavoglia.

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above: Cover of 'The Choices We Made' by Angela Bonavoglia

 Subscribe in a reader

Making A Space for Providers & Allies To Share Stories

The murder of Dr.George Tiller led Steph Herold to found a website -- IAmDrTiller -- on which people could share their support for abortion providers, patients and the pro-choice community. The site says:"This website was created as both a memorial to the lifework of Dr. George Tiller and as a living testimony to the courageous lives of abortion providers."

Herold's use of Internet real estate displays clearly how the pro-choice community can use web technology to connect across borders.

In an article, Honoring Our Legacy: Founding IAmDrTiller, in on On The Issues Magazine, Herold explains her inspiration and thinking:

"I learned about Dr. Tiller's murder via Twitter. I remember exactly where I was on May 31, 2009 — lounging in my mother's home in suburban Maryland, casually browsing the new Internet phenomenon, not yet convinced that it was a worthwhile pursuit for me. I saw a friend's tweet, "Dr Tiller is dead?!?" and at first it didn't register. I looked around. Outside, the wind was blowing through the trees. My beagle was sleeping, snoring next to me. Dr. Tiller was dead. What?

At the time, I worked at an abortion clinic. We referred our patients to Dr. Tiller if we couldn't see them due to a later stage in pregnancy or a severe fetal anomaly. He was a hero in my mind, a kind of Abortion God who stood for justice, peace, and compassion. I aspired to live and work by his high standards, his well-known mantras.

I scoured the Internet to read anything I could about the circumstances of his murder. I called my supervisor in a panic, afraid for my clinic, my patients, my co-workers. I was glued to my computer as the details unfolded, not taking calls from anyone who didn't work in abortionland, my heart drenched in despair and anxiety.

I returned to the clinic a few days later. We had a staff meeting to discuss our feelings, our concerns, and, of course, our safety. Out of that meeting, one of the many sentiments expressed was the need for a space for abortion providers to tell our stories. We were always doing everything we could to support our patients through their experiences – what about our own? In creating such a space, perhaps we could humanize abortion providers and clinic staff. Maybe, we thought, if they see our faces, our compassion, they won't kill us.

So I started the I Am Dr. Tiller Project. Abortion providers, including doctors, clinic escorts, counselors, abortion fund volunteers and many others, were invited to submit a personal story to post on the website. I also asked them to submit a photo of themselves with a sign saying, "I Am Dr. Tiller" as a way of showing our connectedness and solidarity."

Words of Choice, along with dozens of others, shared a story on IAmDrTiller site, submitting a picture and our sign.

Herold (Twitter handle @IAmDrTiller), describes herself as a reproductive justice activist who has worked both in direct service abortion care work and social media strategy. She lives in Brooklyn with her very "pro-choice boyfriend," she says. IN her article, she notes that the Internet opens up multiple possibilities to share stories, solace, information, activist ideas. She lists and links other favorites for active engagement:

"We can all do this in our own ways. Encourage your friends to tell their abortion stories. Ask your local abortion provider how and why they got involved in abortion care work. Volunteer as an escort at an abortion clinic near you. Talk to your local abortion fund about how you can help it raise money to help women afford safe, legal abortions. Keep up with international news about abortion and reproductive rights. Like Dr. Tiller said, trust women."

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above: Screen shot from IAmDrTiller.com

 Subscribe in a reader

Here is South Dakota: A Film Probes Abortion Ban ... and Sex

Just announced as a new release by Women Make Movies is a film about the 2006 vote in South Dakota, in which voters rejected a ban on abortion. Middle of Everywhere, a 52 minute film, was created by Rebecca Lee and Jesper Malmberg in 2008.

Four trailers posted on YouTube by Women Make Movies -- see Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3, Clip 4 -- and another, earlier one, on Vimeo -- open a lens to the sharp and open-eyed style of the film.

Lee does not blanche. She takes viewers across the flat landscape of South Dakota to get inside the minds of people who are asked to vote on an abortion ban, the worst in the nation. South Dakota is a pretty conservative state, and tons of money was poured into this vote. But when the ballot hit the box, the people of South Dakota said 'No' to anti-abortion extremism in a resounding fashion.

The vote was high-stakes -- the first time in the nation that a ban had been put before voters. (Words of Choice toured South Dakota at the time.)

What Lee, a South Dakota native, according to her bio, seems to know her territory especially well. Clip 3 takes the audience inside a bar where one man finds his anti-abortion reasoning in the what deers do to procreate in the wild (after a buck humps a deer, the deer don't have abortions!), and a woman, slurring her words with perhaps one too many orders from the bartender, declares that abortion is "f***ing murder." Clip 4 begins with the most ubiquitous scene possible -- football players and cheerleaders -- and then, ironically, travels to Leslee Unruh, the anti-abortion cheerleader and rallier behind an abortion ban who urges that "personal responsibility" is the best contraceptive.

Kate Looby, the South Dakota director of Planned Parenthood, leads off Clip 1, as she drives up to the clinic in Sioux Falls and describes its bulletproof doors. Filmmaker Lee, from point-to-point, offers travelogue narrative, pointing out that it is the only abortion clinic in the state o 750,000. Looby and Unruh are presented in back-to-back interviews in Clip 4, and for some reason, this seems to be the heart of what Women Make Movies is selling in the film: "there are two sides to every story," runs its marketing campaign. "(T)he issue goes beyond the simple choices of being for or against abortion to the much deeper national question of what values we hold dear," says its promotional copy.

But they may be dulling -- and missing -- exactly what makes this film most interesting. At one point, Lee apparently had a subtitle of "Let’s not talk about sex," and her Vimeo trailer gives an edgier beat. It begins with one printed word on the screen: Sex, and folds out to: "It all gets into huge problems." Rolling in a truck across the landscape with the radio chattering, the text moves to "and in South Dakota the government wants a piece of the action,' with a vibrating beat.

Lee's strength, in fact, is moving away from the talking heads and into the heads of people who live in this community. Lee, who trained in film in London, understands that well, and uses her camera to pop out its contradictions. Says one man in the bar -- which looks every bit like the Midwest pick-up joint -- "If you have sex, you've made a choice."

The South Dakota odyssey was surely an interesting one. Did South Dakota defeat this ban (in 2006 and again in 2008) because of keep-the-government-off-my-back values? An element, perhaps. But it's clear that pro-choice support was underestimated, and the majority spoke with its ballots. Lee -- and other South Dakotans -- seem to recognize that sex happens, and that personal responsibility calls for options -- even in South Dakota.

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above: Women Make Movies graphic for "Middle of Everywhere."

Silent Film is Golden: Clinics, Escorts, Protesters

A short film on YouTube made entirely of simple cartoon drawings that morph to the tunes of a Ragtime-oriented piano is a poignant and light-hearted review of abortion escorts who meet women patients outside clinics to provide support to them and protect them from anti-abortion protestors who like to harass women. The video, created without a narrator and no voices, spells out and the devastating silencing of women's experiences and stories.

"Silenced, A Silent Movie" is 4.15 minutes long and made by an unnamed filmmaker who only identifies herself as Ann Onnomous. The story is through messages on 45 pencil (or pen)drawings that are shown one by one on screen, much like a video flipbook. The video starts out with a drawing that says, "I was originally planning to make a real documentary," and continues on the next screen with, "I thought I had a great subject -- abortion clinic escorts."

The video goes on to describe the role of the escorts, some of the stories of their encounters and getting their assent to the idea of the film. Our narrator, drawn with a few wavy strands of hair, imagines making a wildly successful film and winning an Oscar.

But she begins to see the once-enthusiastic support from her pro-choice allies slip away as clinic workers became increasingly worried about harassment and stalking by the anti-abortion zealots. "I realized ... I didn't want anyone to get hurt from this movie," the silent narrator messages us.

The result is this silent film with drawn depictions of the life of an escort.

The style of the film makes its own point -- the real people are endangered merely for doing their jobs as medical professionals.

A note accompanying the two YouTube postings (here and here) says: "Silenced depicts the grim reality for those who work and volunteer -- at abortion clinics. Made by an anonymous filmmaker, Silenced was first screened at the Women's Medical Fund Spring Reception on May 21, 2009. The event honored abortion clinic escorts in Southeastern Pennsylvania."

"Silenced" is a great an ingenious way to break the mold and share the exasperation at the stigmatization -- in person and in media -- of women's reproductive health concerns. It's further dramatized by the fact that it was first posted online only days before the May 31, 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion zealot.

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above, screen shot from "Silenced."

 Subscribe in a reader