Mothers of Ascension

Matriarchal Advocacy Group MomsRising

by Sarah Coleman, Hillary Harvey and photographs by Hillary Harvey, August 25, 2008

Eileen MacDougall bends over a table, paintbrush in hand, considering how to decorate the all-white baby onesie in front of her. Around her, women are dipping their brushes into DayGlo pots of fabric paint, then carefully brushing messages onto their own onesies. “Let’s use our outside voices!” reads one; another identifies its potential newborn wearer as a “Product of the Labor Movement,” and one more reads, “I’d be cuter with universal health care.”

MacDougall, a 55-year-old mother from Wilmington, Massachusetts, eventually settles on “My mom is MAD…and she VOTES,” which she writes with a flourish in orange, embellishing the text with ribbons on either side. Next to her, Elisa Batista, a 31-year-old mother of two from Berkeley, California, paints “Security for All” in vivid purple letters on the onesie in front of her.

The women—and, it should be pointed out, one man—are among two dozen participants at a weekend workshop, MomsRising: Organizing for a 21st Century Women’s Movement, at Omega Institute near Rhinebeck. Led by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founders of an online grassroots advocacy group called MomsRising (MomsRising.org), the workshop is hosted by Omega’s Women’s Institute, which seeks to examine the relationship between women and power. “Historically, the voice of the mom has been really left out of the public discussion,” says Carla Goldstein, director of the Women’s Institute (and a mother of two girls). “Now, moms are increasingly in the workforce and the public space.”

They’re also online. MomsRising is the most prominent voice of a rising mother’s movement that, if Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner’s instincts are right, could have broad social impact: changing how America thinks about, and treats, its mothers.

I’D BE CUTER WITH PAID FAMILY LEAVE
The leaders of this resurgent women’s movement, Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner, at first seem like unlikely partners. Blades, who began her career as a divorce mediator and software developer, is best known for founding MoveOn.org, the liberal political action group, with her husband, Wes Boyd. Rowe-Finkbeiner is an author, freelance journalist, and consultant with expertise in environmental and public policy who is married to a former Republican senator from Washington State. Their experience with diff erent political constituencies is far from a problem, though; if anything, it’s MomsRising’s secret weapon. “We want to be universal,” says Blades, and Rowe-Finkbeiner adds, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican when you have a baby. These issues impact all of us.”