Today, the National Council of Women of Kenya decried their exclusion from the current mediation talks being lead by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The Council’s chair, Isabella Karanja, condemned Kenya’s disregard for UN Security Council Resolution 1325 that supports women’s participation in mediation. I’ve been paying close attention to Kenya’s dramatic social and […]

Change. It’s the buzz word of 2008–the rallying cry heard loud and clear from voters of all political stripes. All along the campaign trail, each of our prospective political leaders has been trying to prove why he or she is the real bearer of change: Sen. Obama offers the hope for it, Sen. Clinton offers […]

The 2004 election was an exercise in contradictions that left me feeling quite ambivalent about the state of our nation. While youth voting surged by 11 percentage points – with single women leading the way – 78 million eligible voters neglected to take part in the political process. Sure, we had increased voter participation to […]

In the past few days, the media has jumped on race and gender as fervently as they played up the primacy of the polls the week before. With our democratic forerunners embodying so many political “firsts”, they offer an opportunity to bring to light the important issues of race, gender and class that have been, […]

Is the crude and misogynistic language being used to describe Senator Clinton on the Internet Hillary-specific vitriol? Or is this a reaction to having a woman run for the nation’s highest office?

“I tried so hard to keep my heart and head separate.” That’s what former Secretary of State Robert McNamara said when speaking about his fateful decisions during the Vietnam War. But wasn’t that false divide between head and heart the root problem of Vietnam – and perhaps the source of our nation’s disengagement and frustration […]

Last night was a win for our country. People turned out in unprecedented numbers across the tundra of Iowa to vote for candidates that represent the divisions that have plagued us far beyond our political parties: race, gender and class. History was made when the first viable African-American man topped the democratic field in Iowa, […]

A collective sigh of relief will probably be heard nationwide after tomorrow’s Caucus, when Iowa again recedes into the anonymity that is its normal fate. Yet beyond the constant stream of TV ads, media brouhaha, and general campaign craze, the caucuses offer something else: a unique demonstration of the type of civic involvement that we […]