The Women's Institute at Omega

Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations 

From now until the conference, this space will explore:

• How can we build bridges across the generations that inspire and empower women to change the world?

Visit our website for detailed information on the conference.

Check back often to see new posts and new opportunities to be involved.

Sarah Jones, pretty much the most bad-ass woman playwright/performer/poet/activist of all time, loves Feministing. And we have the video to prove it. (Just another reason to love Omega's conference - you get to meet the coolest women!)

Pat Mitchell moderates panel with the amazing Helen Thomas, Courtney Martin, Charreah Jackson, Liza Donnelly, and Jensine Larsen.

One of my fave quotes was when Mitchell asks Thomas where she asks her, "You've covered presidents from Kennedy to Obama. Who has worked the hardest for women's rights?"

"None of them." *Commence standing ovation.*

(She actually clarified that while presidents have done work to improve the status of women, none of them have really put themselves on the line for women's rights.)

Least favorite quote of hers? "Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist." (Referring to bloggers.) *Commence disappointment.*

A couple of other random Q&A's after the jump.

The Fire This Time: Young Women and the Future of Feminism

Courtney Martin, our amazing Editor, writer and activist extraordinaire and Charreah Jackson, Associate Editor at Essence.com

There has been a lot of amazingness at this conference, so one would think it would be difficult to pick out a favorite moment or aspect of Women & Power. But not for me.

By far the best part of the conference has been meeting this amazing group of young women who came to Omega after seeing our post about scholarships for the conference. Not only is my heart warmed that they ended up here because of our blogging - but the fact that they met each other and connected is similarly amazing. In fact, they've connected so much that they've decided to start a group blog together - woot!

Sometimes I forget that despite the downsides of blogging - hating on each other, out-of-control threads, feminist one-upmanship, etc - the communities we create through blogging really do inspire real life activism and serve an important role in a lot of people's feminism. And I can't imagine a better lesson to remember this weekend than that.

So a big thanks to the young women I've met this weekend; you remind me why I do this work.

The Omega Women and Power Conference knows how to put on a party. We are at the evening performance and it some stage acting from Sarah Jones and a musical performance from Natalie Merchant. Yeah, amazing. Since you can't be here, enjoy the videos below.

My favorite ever 10, 000 Maniacs song.

Isabel Allende

Omega Co-Founder Elizabeth Lesser (who I was thrilled to meet last night) moderates this next panel with novelist Isabel Allende, author Loung Ung, Co-Director of Development at Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) Andrea Lee, Executive Director of the Isabel Allende Foundation Lori Barra, and the fabulous Lateefah Simon we have been gushing about.

Speaking of gushing, Loung Ung introduces Isabel by talking about the first time she read her book about her late daughter Paula, and how it made Loung feel connected to her late mother. In short, she become a crazy huge fan and determined to meet her, which she did and a great friendship was formed.

This was a touching discussion between Loung and Isabel (who has a ridiculous potty mouth, by the way - and I love it) because they don't just talk about using writing as outlet for pain, but how readers can connect with it and use it alleviate their own. It was also about how friendships can be formed through these connections and the story-sharing involved - stories about family, loss and survival, and how activism through writing can not only help ourselves work through our own lives, but trigger a domino effect with others.

As Loung said, "Some of us do it all, and some us do it with writing."

Andrea Lee talks about her work at MUA, which was a good discussion to follow after Loung and Isabel - she talks about the ways that while the Latina immigrants who find the organization have their own story to tell, connecting with other Latina immigrants, hearing their stories and how they parallel allows them to feel connected and fuels their activism together to make their stories visible.

My favorite part of the panel was when Allende said towards the end, "Death is a terrible inconvenience, but not an obstruction," an obstruction to connecting with people, to love and working towards change.

Yes, this is a gushy post. Eat it up.

Check out Lateefah Simon - who has us all in awe of her. More video of the conference to come.

You know you are in a powerful conference space when there is a buzz around you of inspiration, innovation and creativity. The concluding morning panel is a discussion with all the morning panelists about what they are getting out of the conference so far and how they do the work they do. I thought the answers about how the overcome fear were the most powerful.

What is the practice or script you use to push yourself past fear?

Sakena Yacoobi: "Every time I am walking out of my house I am taking a risk...it is my faith that carries me through, side by side."

Alberta Nells: "Spirit, tradition. Instead of wallowing in fear, I pray and go into ceremony so my fears won't happen."

Gloria Steinem: "I was too afraid to speak in public until after 30 and finally decided to speak because of the women's movement and I still was terrified, but I realized if women can't do anything fucking right anyway, might as well do as you please."

Jensine Larsen: "Still have knots in my stomach, I fear I am not doing enough. I go to my stomach and think about my sisters in the struggle around the world and trust peace and that things will happen in time."

Lateefah Simmons: "If my grandmother had a soapbox or a bullhorn, what would she do? I try and garner their strength and all the women that came before us."

I also have to appreciate that Gloria Steinem brought up the irony of us asking Alberta Nells what feminism is to indigenous movements, since indigenous resistance and practice were one of the inspirations to the women's movement in the United States, but was polluted by the legacy of colonization. "Feminism is about memory," she said, and I would add, feminism is about our collective memory and our overcoming the way we have been taught to remember to forget.

I am currently watching a panel discussion with three young leaders and each are so inspiring that I find myself repeatedly holding back tears. Jensine Larsen, Alberta Nells and Lateefah Simon have in common deep roots in community based organizing efforts and a deep connection with a spiritual force that is moving them to action.

First up, Jensine Larsen founded World Pulse an interactive media center that projects the stories of women around the world and analysis of international issues through their eyes. She believes that "pulse" symbolizes the electricity of women's voices rising around the earth. She says, "the creative human potential of women and girls is the greatest untapped resource on the earth and we can use technology and communications to connect and empower these voices." To add she says,"When women control the communications channels, they control their destiny."

There are countless examples of women having even a tiny bit of access utilizing it to share their voices, be it one computer, text, one blog or the strategic use of web 2.0 technology, she tells us. Often women don't have time to be online to blog, their husbands sitting next to the computer disallowing them from using it. She concludes with an example of a woman in Kenya that had been dying of AIDs but managed to retrieve retroviral drugs for herself and 17 other women in her village. Through the use of World Pulse and web 2.0 technology, they were able to bring her story to life and is now flown all over the world to tell her story and train other rural women in how to organize their communities. "How can I go to sleep when my country is burning and Pulse-Wire is my light?"

Up next, Alberta Nells, a young leader/organizer, Navajo organizer. Southwest organizer, her work is focused on protecting indigenous rights to land. When she found they would use recycled waste water as snow on sacred land, that is when she knew she had to speak out, "I can't allow this to happen to my people, to the teachings of my people." She speaks tenderly of her relationship with her grandmother and the power of teachings from a previous generation on how to move our people. She speaks to the power of song to organize and uplift and specifically the teachings of women. When asked about Navajo relationship with feminism, she says she doesn't understand the question as they believe in the balance between the feminine and masculine energy, or recognition of two-spirit in all of us. And concludes, "each one of us is indigenous to a different place and we must tap into that energy."

Finally, Lateefah Simon, 32 feels old as we carry the weight of our grandmothers and came to this work because of our grandmothers and mothers. Lateefah became an organizer by giving out condoms she got in her girls group in high school. It was her informal realization that this is what organizing is. She worked deeply with communities that people wouldn't touch, drug addicts, sex workers and holding them and giving them support. She understood at a young age how to raise money and build resources, "if we could battle pimps on the street, it was easy." When she realized that there was a choice to parent, she embraced the power of that choice and decided to become a radical choice organizer for the African American community. In talking about the prison industrial complex and re-entry programs she says, "human and civil rights issues are women's issues" and concludes, "of all that we have learned in our work how to do we move that power and use it in a man's world?"

I don't think this live-blog can even start to do justice to how powerful this session was. We took some video so we will be posting that as well.

The Feministing crew is still at the Women & Power retreat at Omega. Kicking off today's speakers is Sakena Yacoobi, who founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995. After the Taliban closed girls' schools in the 1990s, AIL opened underground home schools and women's learning centers. Today AIL is still working to empower Afghan women, and Yacoobi continues her work despite constant threats to her safety.

One of the biggest consequences of her nation being at war for decades, Yacoobi says, is the loss of the educational system. If people can defend themselves through communication, they don't need a weapon. But through years of war, the educational system was demolished. So she wanted to do more than teach people to read and write -- and think critically. And so she began opening schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

In a matter of one year, her classes went from 300 students to 1500. All girls. "These girls are very bright. They wanted to have a future," she says.

Since the government has taken over many of the schools AIL founded, many people have become distrustful of the schools. So AIL began opening Women's Learning Centers as an alternative. The centers teach some curricula that the government-run schools don't: peace education, democracy, ethics, health, family planning, sex education. These are the topics, she says, that lead to electing better leaders, making a more peaceful country, empowering women.

Why has her organization been so successful? "We work with tradition, culture, religion." No matter how much the technology advances, people's traditions must be treated with respect.

"A lot of good things are happening in Afghanistan," Yacoobi says. "But the government is not doing that much. We don't have roads, electricity, clean water, shelter, basic rights of human beings. The Taliban, day to day, are getting more power. And our people are tired of fighting. Those people close the door of education. Women can't even walk down the street. They have no mercy."

On the recent election: "The men are scared to go to the polls because the Taliban announced that if you go and vote we'll cut your finger. And they did that. But women did go. They went to those polls. Through the leadership workshop we teach them how to choose their leader, why it's so important you get involved in politics, why it's so important for you try to negotiate and communicate. So women are going and voting."

Yacoobi continues, "The news is that Afghan women are empowered. They are intelligent. They are courageous."

"You might hear there is war. People are killed. Acid poured into faces of girls. Every day there is bombing, rocket shelling, torturing. But the women of Afghanistan get up in the morning and say goodbye to their family and go to work and go to the learning center. They found out that this is the only way they can stop the problem. They must be educated. And they are learning. And they are not afraid."

Alberta Nells, a youth leader of the Navajo Nation, does the final closing for the evening. At 19-years-old, she is the youngest member of the faculty here at Omega.

She says that she thought it would be most appropriate to do a journey song. The song, she explains, begins with a prayer for "good planning," which corresponds with all the community organizers in the house. She promises that rain is a good sign: "For us, that mist and that fog means that our holy people, our deities are among us."

"You're not closing the ceremony because the ceremony will never be closed. The blessings will never stop."

Gloria Steinem was seriously bad-ass tonight. I have no idea if she reads Feministing - but in case she does...

Gloria, all the folks at Feministing would like to formally invite you to write a column for us called "Cunt Power." What do you think?

"We've learned from the domestic violence movement that the maximum time of danger is when a woman is escaping.

That's where our country is.

We're not going to put up with the same financial system, fed up with the health care system, not supporting wars, by 2012 we'll be a majority, non-white country.

We can see that the country is escaping and also that the danger is present.

What we need is a big national movement, like MADD, that simply says no house is safe if it has a gun in it. That connects our home and our lives to the armaments everywhere.

I think we should do it big."

Lateefah Simon (who is amazing, btw) introduced Gloria Steinem who is one of the great speakers kicking off the conference tonight.

Steinem says that while "difference is the source of learning" and that "difference is a gift," we should focus on our shared humanity. Also, she is hilarious: apparently back in the day "studies" said that only women should type because we had the necessary motor skills to do so. Then computers came long. (Ha!)

I'm also glad that she's talking about forced sterilization as its related to reproductive justice and that racism and sexism are "intertwined and cannot be uprooted separately." Also, she mentioned the prison industrial complex - as Miriam said in her conference tweet: Rock.

My favorite line of the night: "The stereotype about young women is that they're ungrateful and inactive - this is utter bullshit."

Also: "More young women identify as feminists than older women, yet we're led to believe that the opposite is the case." Sweet.

And scary: "If only white women had voted, John McCain would be president."

And... "Is the women's movement racist? Yes, the country is racist."

And more amazing: Older women ask her if she's surprised about the way young women and dress and she responds, "well I wore miniskirts and a button that said 'cunt power,' so..."

There's something particularly intense about doing a go-around where hundreds of women introduce themselves. Kudos to the Omega crew for making space for all the women here!

As you may already know, the Feministing crew is in upstate New York at Omega's Women & Power conference. We'll be liveblogging a good deal of the conference's events and posting pics and videos of the amazing women participating this weekend.

We just finished up dinner (we're still recovering from the awesome chocolate cake) where we met all of the bad-ass faculty here, and waiting on tonight's speakers. More to come!

As we gear up for Omega's Women and Power conference next weekend, we find this week's post in our partnership series on intergenerational feminism is by two women - a mother and daughter - on being raised/raising a feminist. Enjoy!

RAISING A FEMINIST

By Sil Reynolds

In one week my daughter leaves home. My 18-year-old baby turned young woman, Eliza, is packing the car for college: Botticelli posters, red and pink pillows, a desk lamp, closet organizers, a hat stand - nesting things for a nest that I will not be sharing with her. This is our sacred rite, our last great initiation and our milestone together: shopping, packing, planning, and giddy giggling energy. SHE'S LEAVING? Can't I come too? I want to take her courses "Shakespeare's Present Tense" and "Social Psychology", I want to meet new people, I just want to stay at college with her and cuddle at night in one bed with my little girl and whisper about the world.

Yet, remarkably, I also find myself ready to release her because she is so ready for the world.

I intended to raise a daughter who lives authentically, passionately and on her own terms -a daughter who is open-minded and openhearted. In short, I intended to raise a feminist. My husband was a remarkably attuned father and I had extraordinary friends and family at my side. I have taken notes as I have mothered because I teach workshops for mothers and their teenage daughters. So as I pause at the dawn of this new era of empty nesting, I offer this list:

1. Find a village to raise your child. Take Hilary Clinton's advice to heart and find village women and men to help you raise your child in a loving and supportive community. You cannot do everything or be everywhere - create that circle for her and for you.

2. Love your body. Then your daughter will be inspired to cherish her own unique feminine body. Teach about what is wrong about those too skinny images that are coming at her every day.

Here's another in our series on intergenerational feminism in partnership with the Omega Institute. We're all getting excited about next month's conference, Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. Check out this reflection on feminism by Essence magazine writer Charreah Jackson.

I stumbled into feminism through the back door. And honestly, I am still finding my footing. Growing up in a Black neighborhood in Atlanta's suburbs, going to Black schools, having Black ballet teachers and dentists, I was always exposed to women in powerful positions while being educated on the historical struggles of my people. So the thought that I could be denied things for my gender in this day was a slow one.

It was a big eye-opener to begin to network with powerful women journalists right out of college and be schooled on how recent many breakthroughs for women are in the business and still how far we have to go. Instead of being so tuned in to the lack of Black people in power at a company, network or editorial page, I was also counting the few women too. I left my Black bubble and came back to Earth, where women were only in bigger numbers when it came to births.

I had a new word to describe why my blood boiled when a male professor wanted to call me sweetie and pat me on the back like a dog. While volunteering with Heads Up, I had a new word for the explanations I gave my kindergarten charges on why the boys could help with the dishes during playtime.
And I had a new underdog that I was looking at in the mirror and millions of faces around the globe.

Sometimes I still feel in the back of the room for the causes I fight for, and seeing some feminists attacks on our President during his race had me examining my new found feminism.

Check out this guest post from author and activist Gail Straub, who will be at the Omega Institute's intergenerational conference that we'll be at this fall.

This past May in celebration of my sixtieth birthday I returned to Paris where I had studied Marxism at the Sorbonne as a twenty year old college student. I thought I was returning to Paris because I loved everything about the City of Lights including her museums, churches, cafes, concerts, wine, patisseries, parks, and yes, the stubborn proud Parisians too. All this was still true as I fell head over heels in love with Paris just like I had forty years ago. But something else, something unexpected, was waiting for me in Paris. I turned into a twenty-year old young woman again.

As I revisited my old neighborhood haunts my whole being seem to lighten. I felt open, excited, as if everything were new and possible. I had the energy of four people and my imagination was on fire. Studying at the Sorbonne in the aftermath of the historic student revolution of 1968, I returned to those streets where we had protested and I sensed a quickening in my old bones, my passion to change the world fully reignited. Unselfconscious about my miserable French accent, I engaged in myriad of lively dialogs about Obama and Chirac, arts and culture, with every imaginable sort of Parisian. I could even eat like a horse gaining not a single ounce as had been true four decades ago. Oh the joy to be in Paris and eat anything I wanted, whenever I wanted!

Alas coming back to my mountain home in the Hudson River Valley, once again I turned into my sixty-year old self; overly responsible, stuck in old habits and patterns, working too hard, longing for more energy, caring too much about what others think, and a bit arrogant. But fortunately my awesome "Parisian internal intergenerational dialog" had lodged in my heart and wasn't about to let go. My brief return to the energy and spirit of my twenties was one of the greatest gifts of turning sixty. It was a crucial reminder that in order to stay vibrant, creative, engaged, passionate about changing the world, willing to take unabashed wild actions, I simply must have my younger sisters teaching, inspiring, and lightening me up.

And this brings me to Omega's Women and Power Connecting Across the Generations Conference. What a wonderful invitation to laugh and cry and sing about the issues that we all care about as women. What a rare opportunity for a focused discussion among generations about important things like power, voice, and feminism; men, family, and relationships; work, creativity, and spirituality. All these central issues mean something quite different to me as a Boomer informed by the era of the sixties than they do to a Millennial shaped by very different times. What if we put together our understanding, our confusion, and our heart's longing? What if we co-mentor each other? As an older I really do need to learn about the true benefits of a blog. And exactly how is it that you younger sisters are transcending the old boundaries of race and gender? As a younger woman you could be intrigued with my experience of how compassion deepens with the passing decades and how the presence of death becomes a precious advisor. And I bet you might be interested to know what I learned as a young woman during the student revolution in the streets of Paris forty years ago.

Bio after the jump.

Check out this interesting guest post by Dr. Ana Nogales, a health and human rights advocate, on the power of women's stories, as understood through her own mother. This is one more voice to our continued exploration of generational issues, leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We are publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome.

My mother never told me her whole story. She relayed pieces of it here and there, but I could tell that her pain was much greater than her measured words revealed. After marrying my father in a quasi-arranged marriage just before World War II, the two of them left Poland for South America. My mother never saw her parents again. She talked about the love she had for her father but said almost nothing about her mother. I gathered from the little she told me that her mother, my grandmother, was neglected as a child and never had a voice in her family. In our family, my mother had a voice but most of the time it was a voice of negativity. I believe that the reason for this was that my mother was never able to overcome her family's tragedy.

It was only in the last few months of her life that my mom was able to speak from her heart. She spoke of how it was in her family when she was growing up--that girls and women knew their place and couldn't deviate from that--and how the attitudes of her elders were passed on to her. She also opened up about my Jewish family's ordeal in Poland and how painful it had been for her to leave her family behind. I had known the outlines of her story but not her feelings about all that had happened. It was so important for me to finally receive the missing pieces of that story, because it was part of my own history as well.

Today, sadly, there are too many women whose voices are silenced due to discrimination and violence against women. Sometimes we keep our stories to ourselves because we don't want to burden our children with the pain of the past. But such silence doesn't allow the younger generation to learn from what their elders went through--and to strive to create change. This is why it is so crucial for grandmothers and mothers to reach out to the younger generations and share their stories, however painful they may be, so that our personal and cultural histories are not lost. And it is equally important for younger women to keep asking their mothers and grandmothers to relay the stories of their lives. As we engage in this process of intergenerational dialogue, we can begin to connect to each other at the soul level--and work together toward the goal of women's empowerment.

Bio after the jump.

As we've posted previously, there are plenty of generous scholarships available to folks for this fall's Omega conference: Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. But you have apply by June 1 (that's Monday people)!

The feministing crew will be there, live blogging, interviewing some of the keynote speakers, teaching folks how to blog etc. We'd love to meet you!

*To apply to be part of a cross-generational facilitated dialogue, go here.

And speaking of, Check out Katha Pollit's recent piece on feminism and generational divides.

As for next week, the Feministing editors will be going to the Omega Institute for a strategic planning retreat where we'll be discussing and making decisions around various issues concerning the blog as well as benefiting from Omega's Service Week, in which nearly thirty other amazing organizations and groups will be receiving professional consultation on how to better their work. Among these grantees are organizations we know and love like Girls Write Now, Sadie Nash Leadership Project, and the Amethyst Women's Project.

Since we'll be pretty busy retreating and strategizing, our posting from Monday through Wednesday will be extremely limited, with most posts being Feministing-related as we enter each conversation topic during those days. For example, we might conduct polls on what you'd like to see covered more often, ask for your thoughts on comments, etc. We'd love your feedback, so please check in and give us your thoughts!

In the meantime, let the summer (finally) begin. Any exciting excursions for folks this weekend?

Check out this interesting guest post by Carla Goldstein, the director of the Women's Institute at Omega, on the feminist progress within her own family. This is one more voice to our continued exploration of generational issues, leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We are publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome. And don't forget to turn in your scholarship applications! They're due June 1st.

My day began with bringing my pouting 8-year-old daughter to school, mad because we were late again. I felt sympathetic, remembering what it was like to always be the last kid at drop off and pick up. My mom, who was a single parent in the 1960s and 70s, was constantly juggling work and caretaking.

As I drove home I remembered that I had nothing in the fridge to feed my mother, now 70 and visiting from Florida for my daughters' dance recital. I made a quick detour to the supermarket. Walking into the store, I realized I was still wearing pajama bottoms. After a moment of panic, I decided whatever! I shopped anyway. Back in the car, I felt a well of gratitude towards my mother for her "whatever!" attitude that mortified me as a child, and turns out to be an essential source of my strength as an adult.

While unpacking groceries, I asked my mom what messages her mother had given her about being a woman. She had trouble finding something on point. Then out came a sequence of two short memories. The first was about her mother (my grandmother) who grew up in an orthodox Jewish family in the East Bronx during the early 1900s. When my grandmother had been a little girl, her mother (my great grandmother) had insisted she get a pair of roller skates because all children should have skates, not just the boys!

My mother's second memory was about her father refusing to let her take driver's ed in high school. He believed women had no need to drive. My grandmother tried to persuade him, but lost the argument. Years later, at age 55, my grandmother taught herself to drive and then helped my mother learn to drive who was then 35 years old.

Upon hearing these two stories, I had a new way of understanding my matrilineal heritage. Until this telling, I had always attributed my adolescent hobby of roller skating to be a happy accident and my early driving as a necessity. It never occurred to me that my mother's enthusiasm for my skating or her permission to drive as soon as I hit the age limit was connected to a family through-line of liberation. The personal stories that connect to the history of women's mobility reminded me that social change is an ever intertwined process moving between our private, day-to-day lives and larger political forces.

Over the past century, women's lives have changed so radically -- and unevenly! Some women still have no freedom of mobility, and even worse are stuck in slavery, violence and racking poverty. The promise now, aided by a global communications network, is that we can share information, knowledge, inspiration, and resources, as we build stronger coalitions to take the next leap in liberation for ourselves and the planet so desperately in need of women's leadership.

At this year's Women and Power conference at Omega Institute we will be talking across the generations to reflect on and celebrate how far we have traveled, to examine things left undone, and to inspire each other to take the next leap forward in building a world where women's dreams are valued and realized.

We are hungry to hear your intergenerational stories -- online at feministing, and in September at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York.

With love, Carla Goldstein

Carla Goldstein's complete bio is after the jump.

Check out this awesome ongoing blog dialogue between Letha Dawson Scanzoni, 72, and Kimberly B. George, 27--thus the snazzy name of the blog, 72-27. They are both self-identified Christian feminists and discuss everything from labor division in the home to violence in Pakistan to chickens. Don't miss it. A long excerpt from super smart Kimberley:

I wanted to begin this letter by letting you know that I have been thinking a great deal about that first article you linked in your last post (the BBC article that talked about women reportedly confessing the sin of pride more than men). It so happened that when I got your letter I was reading Feminist Theory and Christian Theology by Serene Jones. (Dr. Jones used to be a professor at Yale Divinity School, and now she is at Union Theological Seminary.) Her book gave me a news lens for seeing some of the important issues in Reformed theology, particularly the weighty idea of "pride equals sin" within that tradition.

Jones explains that Calvin, similar to many preachers today, focused on pride as being one of the most damaging aspects of the human condition. Pride was a brazen, over-inflation of self that offended God, or so Calvin and others have said. It was the essence of sin and to be avoided at all cost for a healthy spiritual life.

Dr. Jones questions where women--and other marginalized people--fit in this tradition. It is one thing for the most powerful people in society to promote these ideas around pride: perhaps Calvin's deepest struggle really was this grandiosity of self that he describes. Certainly, many of the preachers I have listened to seem to struggle with pride a great deal, so it makes sense to me that they would define sin in terms of over-inflation of self.

And yet these preachers and theologians are often white heterosexual men with tremendous spiritual authority who are at the top of the power structures in society. Of course they struggle with pride. They are simply reading the Bible and writing their theology out of their lived experience. They are being honest with what they know-- they just are not seeing from the vantage points of those not sharing their pedestal. Perhaps they have no idea of the "view from below" or have no sense of what it means to hold the kind of power that they have. (Indeed, they might even deny that a power structure exists, so far are they from understanding marginalization)

So, what happens when all those messages about the sin of "pride" are communicated from a position of power to those who are disempowered and marginalized? What happens when the promoters of this theology are in an entirely different position of status and voice than those "below" them?

This blogs represents just the kind of dialogue that I hope will be happening in person at the upcoming Omega Institute conference next fall, Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. Don't forget to get those scholarships in.

Full bios for Letha and Kimberley after the jump.

Check out this interesting guest post by artist and yogini Maya Breuer on her own history as it relates to feminism through the generations, a topic we will continue to explore leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We will be publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome.

Back in the 60's I did not fit the typical description of a feminist. When Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan founded the Women's Political Caucus, I was enmeshed in the politics of economic inequality. I attended the '72 Democratic National Convention, as a representative from the National Welfare Rights Organization, protesting cutbacks in federal assistance to poor families.

Following that convention, I did community action work in equal employment and affirmative action. I was also a young black mother attempting to find my voice, which was becoming tinged with overtones from inspiring women like Angela Davis and Sonya Sanchez.

I was also in an abusive marriage. After one particular beating from my husband, I went to the local police station seeking protection. I registered my complaint. The officer asked, "Isn't he that news reporter from Channel __?" "Yes, I replied, he is."

He then asked me to have a seat. When he returned he said, "Mrs.___, we'll take you home, and have a conversation with him. Then he added, "He's a good guy, we'll talk with him."

The police escorted me home, spoke with my husband, but nothing happened. I was struck with the reality that there was no protection for me or my children. True, I was a black woman, but now I felt the need to align myself with other women, and to figure out how I fit in to the feminist movement. Was there a place for black women in the feminist movement? If I joined would it somehow diminish my commitment to racial equality?

I joined a consciousness raising group. We met regularly, we laughed, we talked, we cried, we pondered and discussed events of the day in the feminist and the civil rights movements. We talked about how restrictive marriage could be, that women had no personal reproductive rights, the need for legal protection and safe haven for women being abused, and sitting on the floor we even looked at our own vaginas with speculum-like mirrors.

I read The Feminine Mystique, lauded Shirley Chisholm's run for the Presidency and celebrated the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, all the while trying to figure out where I stood. Was I a feminist?

Since the 90's my work as a yoga instructor and director of the yoga retreat for women of color has led me to recognize the value in an evolving and growing feminist perspective. I have worked primarily with women of all ethnicities, socio economic backgrounds and generations. Our intergenerational dialogues have encouraged many to find their own voice and vision for personal growth. The need to be part of a collective feminist consciousness is as essential today as ever.

This September, women of all colors and generations are coming together at Omega for the Women and Power Conference to dialogue about feminism, health, art, body, mind and spirit. I look forward to sharing my voice and experiencing the collective voices and wisdoms of others. Perhaps our intergenerational dialogues at Omega will begin an evolution into the next wave of global woman spirit and the feminist movement.

See Maya's full bio after the jump.

We've posted a bit about this before, but just to reiterate...Feministing is partnering with the Omega Institute to bring the wonders of online communication (live blogging! video interviews! oh my!) to their upcoming conference, Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. We're super psyched that as part of their mission to create this long overdue dialogue between diverse women, they are offering tons of scholarships to young women.

I went to last year's conference, thanks to the amazing Rachel Simmons who invited me to co-present with her, and it was a really powerful experience. Not only were the actual presenters moving and varied, but the participants were a highly energized, deeply committed group of women looking to learn about the next generation of feminists. I think this year's conference will be a real opportunity to talk about our generational differences and similarities, heal some old wounds, and move forward in doing the work that we are all so determined to do in the world.

Since 2002, Omega has offered over $300,000 in scholarships. Be a part of it this year! You just might interact with Gloria Steinem, Isabelle Allende, Helen Thomas, Celinda Lake, and, duh, us. All the info is here; don't miss the awesome video from Latonya Jones. Due date is June 1.

Added bonus: this year Omega is going to experiment with a really cool cross-generational facilitated dialogue. To apply to be a part of it, go here.

The Omega Women's Institute is holding an intergenerational women's conference for some thought-provoking panels and inspirational dialogue this coming fall, and we are incredibly stoked about it. So stoked, in fact, that we're teaming up with them to help spark some discussion in the blogosphere pre-conference as well as liveblog the actual conference for Feministing readers (and feminists worldwide!) to enjoy.

The unique thing about Women and Power: Connecting Across the Generations is that it will be coming out of the Omega Institute, which is one of the longest running centers on spiritual growth in this country. It was co-founded by feminist Elizabeth Lesser in 1977 and, as such, it has continuously been at the forefront of linking the personal and the political. We're excited to see the ways in which the Omega approach infuses the often disappointing dialogue on intergenerational feminism with the depth and complexity it deserves.

From now until the conference, the Institute and ourselves will be bringing you guest posts and other updates to foster some pre-conference discussion and give you more of an idea of what to expect on the conference weekend, September 11-13th. In the meantime, check out more info here and you can find all Omega-related updates on Feministing here.