In this issue:Page From…

3 Leaping into GirlSpring Jane Stephens Comer

4 The ―Mother-Daughter‖ Divide: LadyGaga!

Robynn James

6 Meet the GirlSpring Board of Directors

8 Inspired by My Time with GirlSpring Toren Anderson

9 Not so very long ago… Housekeeping Monthly, May 13, 1955

10 GirlSpring News Around the world

12 GirlSpring Events Update

GirlSpring ―Rocks‖ is the e-newsletter of GirlSpring, Inc, Edited by Executive Director Robynn James.

If you have comments or suggestions, please call 866-444-8940.

Feministing

―Growing Up Digital‖ is not something that comes naturally to anyone over 20. Those of us at GirlSpring who are

over 20, and especially over 40, are trying to keep up with the aggressive digital age and continue our feminist

activities while learning how to become digitally enlightened. When I was 8 years old, televisions, air conditioners,

cell phones, computers, cocaine, meth, and breast implants were virtually unheard of, and we‘ve managed to

make those hurdles, so we will tighten our belts and pursue this tech age to the best of our ability.

Feministing, founded in 2004, now attracts more readers than Ms. Magazine had subscribers in its heyday.

―There are still a lot of people who think that unless you‘re out in the street with a picket sign, you‘re not a real

activist,‖ says Jessica Valenti, Feministing founder. ―They‘re not taking into account the fact that online campaigns

have changed legislation, culture. The last big pro-choice march in Washington, in 2004, was very much organized

by text message, e-mail and the Internet, and a third of the people who showed up were under 25.‖

My generation got our information from the radio, newspaper and snail mail. Now, it‘s instant messaging,

information radiating from YouTube, videos, the Internet, FaceBook, blogs, IPhones, IPads, traveling at the speed of

light.

GirlSpring intends to have a state of the art web site. That will be the infrastructure of our organization so that

women and girls can access sites which will take them to a better place. Our Program Development will result in

collaboration with other women‘s and girl‘s organizations, and foundations across the nation, so that all

information is in one place. We will offer information on volunteerism, philanthropic potentials, career possibilities,

videos, links and more. It will be a safe haven for women and girls, and a place where expression is expected.

We are excited about getting it up and running. Digital It Is!

Check it out ----www.feministing.com.

jane

In late October, GirlSpring conducted its first series of focus groups on issues affecting women and girls. Two groups came together on two successive days, and were asked to take a short survey and discuss their answers to questions about how different generations of women perceive the world.

The women in our groups were divided roughly by ―waves,‖ a term of art used to describe activist generations in the feminist movement. This ―first wave‖ is represented by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and later, Alice Paul. The emergence of the ―second wave,‖ came with the publication of books like The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, and The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Freidan—along with Gloria Steinem‘s editorial journalism in Ms. Magazine. The Second Wave‘s crowning achievement being the SCOTUS decision in of Roe v. Wade –and so the demarcation point is 1973. Rounding up, we divided our groups according to whether they had attained a 40th birthday.

A full report on the Focus Groups will be available in December. But one fascinating glimpse into the generational divide became absolutely clear when each group was asked to choose a woman who has had ―an important impact on your life.‖

The ―over 40‖ group gave a variety of answers: Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, Susan B. Anthony. But the ―under 40‖ group unilaterally settled on one woman: Lady Gaga! Hmmm…what does this say about the new feminism?

The Gloria Steinem of a new generation? GirlSpringers

say, Lady Gaga speaks for young women and girls.

Join the GirlSpring

Community Page

on FaceBook to learn about

upcoming events, get

media links and contribute

to discussions!

Introducing….The GirlSpring Board of Directors

Jane Stephens Comer, Founder & PresidentJane is a long-time feminist activist, respected philanthropist, and the visionary behind GirlSpring. As an entrepreneur in 1987, she incorporated The Elegant Earth, Inc. She has served on the Board of the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham. She was recently recognized with the Ms. Foundation’s “Woman of Vision” Award. Founder of ArtPlay, an innovative arts education program for kids.

Dianne Mooney, Vice-PresidentDianne is founder and retired editor of Southern Living at Home. She has started many initiatives to serve women, including Cut it Out! Which trains hairstylists to recognize the signs of domestic abuse. In addition to serving as Vice-President, Dianne is the Co-Chairwoman of GirlSpring‘s Marketing and Communications Committee.

Tommie Cummings, TreasurerTommie Cummings is a Partner in the tax department and serves on the Executive Committee at FCTG. She has over 30 years of public accounting experience. She has served on many nonprofit boards and has been instrumental in forming GirlSpring and other organizations.

Anne Epstein, SecretaryProject Manager for Clarus Consulting Group and former assistant encyclopedia editor, Anne knows ―lots of random facts about even more random subjects.‖ About GirlSpring, she says, ―I‘m looking forward to watching GirlSpring start exciting, meaningful conversations with interesting, diverse women, girls, and their allies across generations.‖ In addition to serving as Secretary, Anne is Co-Chairwoman of the Marketing and Communications Committee.

Lois Shindelbower, DirectorLois has practiced Landscape Architecture, a profession dominated by men in the southeast for 30 years providing design for many Fortune 500 companies. She attributes her opportunities and success to her mother as her generation faced difficulties in business that she took for granted. ―I joined the Girl Spring board to collaborate with other non profits to mentor girls and young women that want professions in their future. They face their own challenges today, different from ours and our mothers, but with a foundation of trust and shear determination we can achieve our goals and our dreams.‖

Kristina Scott, DirectorExecutive director of the Alabama Poverty Project, which mobilizes Alabamians to eliminate

poverty, and the vice chair of the Alabama Commission to Reduce Poverty. She graduated

from the University of Florida and the Emory University School of Law. ―As a member of the

program development committee, I am looking forward to creating innovative ways to

impact the lives of women and girls by through meaningful relationships.‖

Virginia Sweet, DirectorAuthor, counselor, and political activist who has led a number of important women‘s

organizations, including the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham, where she led the

community in developing social change initiatives to address issues that disproportionately

affect women and girls, primarily poverty and violence

Renee Kemp-Rotan, DirectorDirector of Capital Projects for the City of Birmingham. As an architect and urban designer,

Renee is a master planner with a passion for quantitative results oriented programs. ―I want

women to identify their dreams, place a value on their dreams, create the necessary structures

to protect their dreams before, during and after implementation.‖

Interested in serving on a GirlSpring Committee? Volunteers needed

to help with Program Development, Events and Outreach,

Communications and Marketing, and Fundraising. Call Robynn at

866-444-8940 for more information or talk to a GirlSpring Board

Member!

Inspired by my time with GirlSpring…By Toren Anderson

After visiting Birmingham and speaking to the Girlspring Gathering at the Cantina inOctober, I happened to meet a young friend in the grocery store. We chatted aboutGirlSpring in the produce section with her mom and dad. She is 13 and loves to cook.She is having a time in school as most middle-schoolers are. I asked what her passionwas; it is cooking. I asked if she wanted to go cook with a client at his restauranttomorrow and learn about ways to help the needy with her culinary passion. Shesent me a message on Facebook within an hour and we made a plan to meet atVingenzo's the next day.

While I was on Facebook I visited the girl's “wall”, which for those of you who don’tfrequent Facebook is the area where users make postings responding to questionslike, “What is on your mind?” She has the most distressing posts and so dirty. I knowshe probably does not have an idea how they reflect. I hope that through GirlSpringwe can help to teach girls about perception and appearances.

When we met at the restaurant, my friend the Chef (who is also the head of aCulinary Program here) chatted with her about ways to serve. She loved it! I felt sogreat to be the connector between a young girl, who had clearly been having adifficult time, and a passion she can now pursue with the guidance of an expert inthe field. My niece will join us at the restaurant and see what we can stir up here.They want to do something over the holidays. We are trying to make it real, helpful

and hoping it will catch on. Get it? Springing into action!

Girl Ta

lk

Toren with next generation

GirlSpringer, Ms. Annabella

Daisy

NEWS & POLITICS (from Alternet)

By Adele M. Stan

Sarah Palin's Brand of 'Feminism' More Popular With Men Than Women

Palin peddles a shallow narcissism dressed in 'empowering' feminist language.

November 26, 2010 |

Listen up, all you champions of women's rights,Sarah Palin has a message for you. All that stuffabout equal pay, controlling your own body,putting an end to domestic violence and rape:that's a whole lotta tired old hooey. There's anew feminism afoot, a feminism that's movedbeyond the issues of economic justice and yourright not to be beaten and violated, and it's allabout Sarah.

In her new book, America By Heart, Palin takesaim at feminists who blazed the trail to politicalagency that Palin now walks, accusing HillaryClinton of "bra-burning militancy" and GloriaSteinem and second-wave feminists of obsessionwith domestic violence and rape. Perhaps that'swhy, overall, Palin appears to be more popularwith men than with women. A recent CNN pollfound that while, in a hypothetical 2012 match-up against President Barack Obama, formerArkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threatens tosiphon off Obama's former constituency ofindependent women voters, a contest againstPalin does not. Among women, the CNN pollfound, Obama led Huckabee only by 2 percent,according to The Hill, while he trounced Palin by15 percent. Other polls reported by the Hillconfirm the trend by women away from Palin.

How to Buck Up the Science LadiesAn easy way to boost women's scores in physics.

By Amanda Schaffer Posted Monday, Nov. 29, 2010, at 3:58 PM ET

What are the threats of stereotypes? Last week, researchers at the University of Colorado published a psych experiment that seems almost too good to be true. They showed that two 15-minute writing exercises, administered to an intro physics class early in the semester, could substantially boost the scores of female students. Even more curious: the exercises had nothing to do with physics. Instead, students were asked to write about things that mattered to them, like creativity or relationships with family and friends. How could a few paragraphs on personal values translate into enduring better mastery of pulleys and frictionless planes?

When it comes to math and science classes, women can be subtly

hampered by negative stereotypes about their gender. This is the idea

of stereotype threat, advanced by psychologists Joshua Aronson and

Claude Steele, and now solidly established. Stereotype threat can roar

into action when members of any stereotyped group are primed to

think about belonging to it—in other words, when women focus on

being female or African-Americans on being black. It causes

performance problems, but stereotype threat can also be countered,

often in simple ways. As the Colorado writing exercises show, getting

women to focus on things they care about can buck them up. The

lesson is that small doses of affirmation can do a lot of good.

Check out the entire article at www.slate.com

NYC Tests Brakes on Crisis Pregnancy Centers

By Rita Henley Jensen

WeNews editor in chief

Monday, November 29, 2010

New York City is considering following Baltimore in regulating what anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers can say in their ads and window signs. A recent hearing gave those opposed a chance to make their negative reaction clear.

NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--I was the last to testify.It was 6:40 p.m. and for more than five hours the women's issues committee of the New York City Council had listened to testimony about a proposed local law--similar to the one passed in Baltimore last year--regulating crisis pregnancy centers.Crisis pregnancy centers--or CPCs, as everyone was calling them--are sites run by Christian organizations in the United States and around the world. Depending on your point of view, the centers either browbeat and trick teens and women into maintaining unwanted pregnancies or they offer vulnerable and frightened teens and women kindness, support and loving care.

(Read the whole story at http://womensenews.org/story/abortion/101126/nyc-tests-brakes-crisis-pregnancy-centers)

A Woman. A Prostitute. A Slave.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOFPublished: November 27, 2010

Americans tend to associate “modern slavery” with illiterate girls in India or Cambodia. Yet there I was the

other day, interviewing a college graduate who says she spent three years terrorized by pimps in a brothel in

Midtown Manhattan.

Those who think that commercial sex in this country is invariably voluntary — and especially men who pay for sex — should listen to her story. The men buying her services all mistakenly assumed that she was working of her own volition, she says.

Yumi Li (a nickname) grew up in a Korean area of northeastern China. After university, she became an accountant, but, restless and ambitious, she yearned to go abroad.

So she accepted an offer from a female jobs agent to be smuggled to New York and take up a job using her accounting skills and paying $5,000 a month. Yumi‘s relatives had to sign documents pledging their homes as collateral if she did not pay back the $50,000 smugglers‘ fee from her earnings.

Yumi set off for America with a fake South Korean passport. On arrival in New York, however, Yumi was ordered to work in a brothel.

―When they first mentioned prostitution, I thought I would go crazy,‖ Yumi told me. ―I was thinking, ‗how can this happen to someone like me who is college-educated?‘ ‖ Her voice trailed off, and she added: ―I wanted to die.‖

She says that the four men who ran the smuggling operation — all Chinese or South Koreans — took her into their office on 36th Street in Midtown Manhattan. They beat her with their fists (but did not hit her in the face, for that might damage her commercial value), gang-raped her and videotaped her naked in humiliating poses. For extra intimidation, they held a gun to her head.

If she continued to resist working as a prostitute, she says they told her, the video would be sent to her relatives and acquaintances back home. Relatives would be told that Yumi was a prostitute, and several of them would lose their homes as well.

Yumi caved. For the next three years, she says, she was one of about 20 Asian prostitutes working out of the office on 36th Street. Some of them worked voluntarily, she says, but others were forced and received no share in the money.

Yumi played her role robotically. On one occasion, Yumi was arrested for prostitution, and she says the police asked her if she had been trafficked.

―I said no,‖ she recalled. ―I was really afraid that if I hinted that I was a victim, the gang would send the video to my family.‖

Then one day Yumi‘s closest friend in the brothel was handcuffed by a customer, abused and strangled almost to death. Yumi rescued her and took her to the hospital. She said that in her rage, she then confronted the pimps and threatened to go public.

At that point, the gang hurriedly moved offices and changed phone numbers. The pimps never mailed the video or claimed the homes in China; those may have been bluffs all along. As for Yumi and her friend, they found help with Restore NYC, a nonprofit that helps human trafficking victims in the city.

Our October Gathering at Cantina at Pepper Place was a hit! About 50 women and girls gathered over margaritas and guacamole and heard talks by GirlSpringers

Toren Anderson, on “the Unmentored Life;” Renee Kemp-Rotan on “Rebuilding Haiti;” and Virginia Sweet on Domestic Violence. Robynn James, GirlSpring Executive Director talked about the progress the organization is making and the issues facing young girls

today. Videos from ―SPARK a Revolution,‖ The GirlEffect, and Dove‘s RealBeautyCampaign were shared to spur activism and educate the group on international efforts to advance girls and body image in the media.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! The

next GirlSpring event will be on

Monday, February 1, 2011

From 6:30 to 9:00

At ArtPlay

1006 19th Street South

Birmingham, Alabama

For information contact Robynn

at 866-444-8940.

Assuming you love what we are trying to do here at GirlSpring, or at least that you hope for our success—then NOW is a great time to get in on the ground floor as a supporter! We are lean and making plans to build a program that all of us can be proud of in the future, but even now, a few short months after GirlSpring came into existence, we have succeeded in bringing women together around a common vision of making the world a better place.

In 2011, we are planning to roll out new programs that provide support for activist women, bring young women and girls together with experienced women in projects that support women‘s rights, and keep bringing you news and opportunities to meet dynamic women from all over the country who are making a difference.

We need your help! Please consider a donation* of $50, $100, $500 or more to keep us going and growing into the new year. Mail your contribution to: GirlSpring, PO Box 147, Traverse City, MI 49685. Thank you, and happy holidays!

*GirlSpring is an Alabama nonprofit corporation with IRS nonprofit status pending. Donations to GirlSpring are not tax-deductible from your federal taxes at this time.