Devils, Angels, and Changemakers
Dear friends,
Characters in cartoons, who are sweating it, while listening to an angel on one shoulder, and the devil on another, is an old and familiar trope. Those whose consciences have been invoked include Daffy and Donald Duck, Batman, My Little Pony’s Pinkie Pie, and Popeye the sailor man. Someone should do a Ph.D. thesis on this trope, because I think I see a progression of cynicism over time.
Homer Simpson tells Lisa that inside man is a struggle between good and evil that will never be resolved, which then cuts to Good Homer’s grave where Evil Homer dances the cha-cha, chanting, “I am Evil Ho-MER!” In South Park, both the devil and the angel actually agree about the temptation of alcohol. The Devil says, “Go ahead. Drink the beer. It’ll calm you down.” To which the Angel adds: “Yeah. Why the hell not? Don’t be such a pussy….”
All this is of interest to anyone who is wondering, like I am, why surveys of American voters say that a four-time indicted ex-President who disowned a killer pandemic is tied with a sitting President who rejoined the World Health Organization to prevent another global plague and guided legislation to create American jobs and address a climate crisis. I’m worried, no matter who wins next, but can’t help wondering why this equivalency?
I could go on about differences not as stark as good and evil, but if you’re reading this newsletter, you probably are as mystified as I am by all the shades of gray out there and a colorful kaleidoscope of conspiracy theories. We all saw January 6th and heard about PizzaGate, but have you heard that vaccinated people can “shed” their vaccine and thus ruin women’s fertility?
Yes, there are people who believe this.
Have they never heard the older stories of witches hung for curdling the milk of their neighbor’s cows?? This is dangerous stuff.
It is what traditionally has been called mass hysteria, hysteria, a nervous affliction with roots in a witch-era medical theory. It claimed out-of-control emotions are caused by a woman’s out of place womb — or the devil — the problem only hers. In the case of some Supreme Court justices, the theory that out-of-control women are best kept barefoot and pregnant has not been completely outgrown.
What does it mean that our angel trope urges good in a soft and nerdy female voice, while the devil taunts, as a muscular male with a Charlton Heston growl? I suspect we still long for his Moses, who will part the Red Sea with a bold command, enabling our escape. But the sea has been muddied — mostly by privileged men who mostly own America’s power. Their digital chariots distract us, multiplying our alarm — our gripped attention, now their profitable product.
For me, the devil is patriarchy’s fake faith. Yet my father was my first feminist, and my mother never was. Our waters and our tropes are muddied by a cynicism but also a hard-won recognition. Angel-Devil genders have been outed as theater performance, not a dichotomy to cling to, and surely not black or white. We are all complicated, whatever our genders, our races, our votes, and decisions. Each has only 24 hours in a day.
More than Elon’s billions and X-branding is needed. Who will look up from their computers to decide, what’s for dinner? Who will grow it and harvest it and purchase and cook it — and how? Who will get out of bed to comfort our crying babies, a tangible world getting hotter and more dangerous? Fast evolution calls for mind melds, not AI. Out of a million possibilities for something better and more lasting — what is closest and hardest for you?
I’m betting your embodied friends will be wiser and kinder than digital ones.
In solidarity,
Rickey Gard Diamond, AEOO Founder
Upcoming Events
Healing Financial Trauma: What’s Systemic? What’s Personal? What Helps?
When an economy only values what money can buy, your personal money-measure may bring you shame and anxiety whether you have lots of money, or no money at all. Being unemployed or undervalued, losing a business, or not reaching personal goals can trigger stress, humiliation, and debilitating trauma — a Greek word that literally means “wound.” Financial wounds might not bleed, but they can lead to your avoiding the subject, or overspending. Women and people of color are at special risk, as are people who have suffered generational trauma, sexual trauma, domestic violence, or physical illness, addiction, or injury.
We’ve got some surprising perspectives and great resources — join us October 16 on Zoom to learn more. Register here.
Spark Change With Us!
Not long ago, I attended a conference where a national figure in the women’s movement talked about a million-dollar donation she’d just received for her nonprofit.
For three years, AEOO’s alliance has been rooted in a generous, hopeful spirit; three faithful supporters have granted us $4900 a year, and our Giving Circle’s small donors have built our annual budget up to $7000. It amazes me how many educational events we’ve sponsored every year since we started, and there’s more we’d like to offer you.
You probably know where I am going with this: The coming year will be pivotal. AEOO needs your help to raise up more women’s voices explaining our economic system, and how different it can be — An Economy of Our Own, waging life, community, and care, not war!
P.S. If you know a millionaire who might support us, do let us know!!!
Taking Action
Finding Time. The United Auto Workers (UAW) are voicing a demand that AEOO feminists have long made: a four-day work week for five-day’s wages. NPR interviewed UAW President Shawn Fain, who has been reading the union’s 1930s’ publications, when a living wage and a weekend was first proposed. “Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet…that’s not a living. That’s barely surviving, and it needs to stop.” Microsoft Japan’s month-long pilot of a 32-hour week found positive results, including a 40 percent increase in productivity.
via The Center Square Michigan + UAW
Water and Soil and YOU. WILPF-US has been researching PFAS, a group of 14,000 “forever” chemicals so dangerous a single drop in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools is toxic. PFAS were first created by The Manhattan Project that also gave us the atom bomb. WILPF activist Marguerite Adelman explains: “PFAS travel through air, water, and soil and have been found in Polar Bears in the Arctic. It’s a huge environmental problem and is getting national attention because these chemicals cannot be diluted.”
Marguerite helped create an hour-long video focused on Vermont, but says its tools and resources apply to all states. Learn about serious health problems affected by PFAS, products that contain them, how to research your community’s PFAS contamination, and how to protect yourself and your family. These chemicals are often most concentrated near military bases. For more info, email pfasinfo@wilpfus.org or visit WILPF’s Military Poisons website.
Good News from the AEOO Community
On Barbie — and Investing for Better. AEOO founder Rickey Gard Diamond’s latest Women Unscrewing Screwnomics column at Ms. magazine celebrates Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film and Janine Firpo, author of Activate Your Money and co-founder of the nonprofit called Invest for Better.
Firpo says women tend to reject the prevailing investment mentality of winner-takes-all, so she’s helped create Learning Circles for women who want to know how to invest with the planet and its people in mind. What do Barbie and Greta have to do with it? A lot that makes money more fun!
A Historic Vote for Public Banking. The Public Banking Institute, one of AEOO’s allies, has a lot to celebrate! San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Sept. 5 to move forward on business and governance plans for both a Municipal Finance Corporation and a Public Bank. Their first publicly owned financial corporation will eventually be converted into the nation’s first municipal public bank. What is a public bank? It’s owned and capitalized by a state or city; its mission is democratically established to meet the public’s needs, and any profits flow back to the local economy. (Learn more in our Public Banking Zoom of Our Own, available on-demand in our Resource Library.)
Congratulations, Katonya! AEOO Advisory Board member Katonya Hart was awarded the West Virginia Governor’s Award for Civil Rights on Aug. 25, 2023. She actively works on economic empowerment with NOW, the W.V. Women’s Commission, the NAACP, and was also a co-founder of the annual Black Policy Day at the W.V. Statehouse. W.V. Public Broadcasting reported that “she wants the legislative process to be open so that all can participate.”
Hope for the future. AEOO Digital Director Carmen Rios recently wrote for the Women’s Media Center about the rabble-rousing of Generation Ratify, a youth-led feminist group pushing for the publication of the Equal Rights Amendment. In a previous piece for the National Women’s History Museum on the rising tide of confident young activists are shaping the future, she pointed out that “Gen Z’s shaking-up of our political landscape is far from over… as more young people rise to the occasion, more are inspired to do the same.”
Mother Earth’s Equity. AEOO conversationalist and Restore Forward founder Farah Tanis says the harvest at their Earthy campus in upstate New York brings healing by fostering relationships grounded in ecology, culture, and spirituality. “We’re creating space to seed health and turn the tide on the social determinants of health.”
What are those social determinants? KFF, formerly the Kaiser Foundation, point out that health disparities are in large part a reflection of social and economic inequalities for Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Peoples. These include lack of access to jobs and fair pay, health insurance, health services, vaccines, and life expectancy. Black and Native women have the highest rates of pregnancy-related deaths; Black infants are more than two times as likely to die as white infants; Black and Hispanic children are twice as likely to be food insecure than white kids; All Americans are seeing declining life expectancy, but at birth this now stands at 65.2 years for Native Americans and 70.8 years for Black folks, compared to 76.4 for white people.
Sign up for Restore Forwards’ newsletter to learn more about their incredible work.
From the AEOO Resource Library
On July 21, President Biden announced that AI executives had pledged: to not commercially release AI products until they’ve undergone independent safety tests; to institute a watermark system to minimize fraud; and to publicly disclose a tool’s capabilities and limitations. They also agreed to research social effects. These “guardrails” were announced by Amazon, Google, and Meta, the biggest companies racing to outdo each other. With buckets of billions of dollars at stake, what could possibly go wrong?
We thought of our great Digital Possibilities conversation, with AEOO’s Carmen Rios, internet scholar Breigha Adeyemo, Marie Tessler, author of Digital Suffragists: Women, the Web, and the Future of Democracy and Riane Eisler, who has developed a Partnership Technology Toolkit. All urged software companies to include more women and people of color, who often find the internet more risky than white dudes do.
Tune in to the replay on our website — and access our reader for further learning.
Carol Stabile and Maya Rios, in their January article in Ms., The Lack of Women Data Scientists Hurts Artificial Intelligence, cited Stanford U’s Women in Data Science report, writing that “we have a long way to go before women share equally in the creation of the technologies that will change the future.”
Hopefully, we’ll get there together.
