Donald Trump Archives - LiisBeth https://liisbeth.com/tag/donald-trump/ ¤ Field Notes for Feminist Entrepreneurs Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:10:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Fighting Fascism: Lessons from the pro-choice struggle https://liisbeth.com/fighting-fascism-lessons-from-the-pro-choice-struggle/ https://liisbeth.com/fighting-fascism-lessons-from-the-pro-choice-struggle/#respond Tue, 23 Feb 2021 19:20:09 +0000 https://liisbeth.com/?p=14613 Judy Rebick reflects on the rise of the far right in Canada.

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Photo of alt right protest crowd, Million Maga in Washington DC
Washington, DC, USA | Dec 12, 2020 | Million Maga March: Proud Boys in DC. Photo by Johnny Silvercloud

The assault on Congress on January 6 has provoked extensive discussion about the rise and breadth of the far right in the United States. But what of Canada?

Over 6,600 right-wing extremist social media channels, accounts linked to Canada, study finds

Well, I can tell you that I once received a bullet in the mail at my home in Toronto, one of twelve “prominent Jews” in the city to get that threat, serious enough for a police investigation. That was 1994, and I had just stepped down as president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

Like many negative things in our history we don’t like to talk about, Canada has always had fascists in our political spectrum.  They had enough influence during World War II for the government to turn away a boatload of Jews fleeing the Nazi holocaust in Europe. Since Trump’s election in 2016, fascism — or at least far-right extremism expressing white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny — has been on the rise in Canada.  As reported in NOW Magazine, there are now 300 far-right extremist groups in Canada, 30 percent more since Trump came to office. Canada is among the most active countries on white supremacy discussion forums, just behind the U.S. and Britain.  Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment has been on the rise. A 2019 EKOS poll found that some 40 percent of white Canadians now view immigration as a “threat.” And there has been more than a 700% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver since Covid hit.

So how do we stem the rise of fascism and far-right extremism, even turn it back? From the 1980s, I was deeply involved in a battle to secure the most important victory the women’s movement in Canada has ever had – the legalization of abortion. There are important lessons to be gleaned from that struggle that might serve us well in the battle against white supremacy and neofascism.

Picture of Judy Rebick
Writer, activist, feminist Judy Rebick (Photo via Rabble)

Lessons Learned from Fighting Anti-choice Activists

The pro-choice movement faced a well-organized, ideologically rigid, anti-feminist, fanatical anti-choice faction not afraid to use violence and threats, and it had ties to both Church and the Conservative Party. 

Beginning with the Abortion Caravan in 1970, pro-choice activists waged a nearly 20-year struggle — in the streets, in the courts and in the legislature, until the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the abortion law in a landmark decision citing women’s right to privacy—in effect women’s rights to control their own bodies.

I got involved in the struggle in the fall of 1981, when Carolyn Egan and her co-workers in a birth control centre called a community meeting with the idea of opening an illegal abortion clinic to challenge the law, along the model of Dr. Morgentaler’s in Montreal, which had been virtually legalized by the Quebec government after three juries acquitted Morgentaler of breaking the restrictive abortion law.

In Toronto, white middle-class women with connections had some access to abortion under the 1969 law, but birth control workers realized that poor women, immigrant women, rural women, and young women, couldn’t get access. So, they sought to open an abortion clinic and build a movement to support it. The Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) brought together pro-choice groups to generate public support, even before the clinic opened. A rally of 1,000 people at a downtown auditorium, featuring Dr. Henry Morgentaler and activist/journalist June Callwood, kicked off the campaign.

The mass movement in the streets was key, but so was our community work. We would speak and debate the anti-choice anywhere and everywhere. I don’t think I’ve been in as many churches in the 30 years since that time. While it’s hard to change the mind of a true believer, you can convince their followers. For instance, a lot people opposed abortion for religious  reasons and fell prey to the anti-choice movement’s distortions of the procedure. We faced that head on. 

Debate Needs Action

In the fall of 1982, we introduced a resolution supporting the legalization of free-standing abortion clinics at the Ontario Federation of Labour convention. It was controversial but we mobilized almost all the women in the room to line up at the microphones to support it; the ones who spoke were passionate about the importance of the issue to working-class women.

The clinic opened in June 1983 on Harbord Street in downtown Toronto. Dr. Morgentaler arrived in the afternoon. It was my job to escort him across the street, which was crowded with both supporters and reporters with a huge bank of cameras waiting for something to happen. And it did. Half way across the street, a man leapt out at Dr. Morgentaler, threatening to stab him with garden shears. I blocked the attack and chased the man down the street. Courage in the face of threats and attacks is a must in fighting fanatics. Not everyone is able to do that, but some people have to and the rest have to back them up. Those of us who were spokespeople would get threats regularly at work, at home and sometimes in the street. Part of the job of fighting right-wing fanatics is facing their threats.

Three weeks after the clinic opened, the police arrested Morgentaler and the two other doctors working there. Dr. Morgentaler closed the clinic until the trial. Once again, as in Quebec, a jury acquitted him. That outraged the anti-choice activists, and we had to confront them. As the Crown prepared their appeal, the anti-choice faction demonstrated regularly in front of the clinic and harassed women seeking a procedure. We deployed people to be there every day, to help the women through the lines and keep the anti-choice off the property. Direct action, we might call it today. Labour activists who knew how to hold a picket line helped us a lot. 

A critical point came when the Catholic Church decided to call out their troops, asking priests to give their sermon on the evil of abortion and call on all their constituents to demonstrate in front of the clinic. Every day of that week, Monday to Thursday, 2,000 people, including children from Catholic schools, were bused in to demonstrate in front of the clinic. They garnered media coverage night after night.

Agree to Disagree, But Act

By this point, we had held many rallies, but none bigger than 2,000. We didn’t think we could mobilize that many people. A less radical but very important pro-choice group – the Canadian Association for Repeal of the Abortion Law (CARAL)—argued against mounting a counter demonstration, feeling it would make us look weak if fewer numbers showed up. OCAC discussed it and decided, whatever numbers, we had to fight back. Otherwise our people would get demoralized. We called a counter demonstration on Friday. CARAL was furious, but they pulled out all the stops trying to make to make the demonstration a success. At that moment, I learned something key about building a movement: You have to build broad coalitions with people you might disagree with, but it’s winning the struggle that matters. OCAC and CARAL had differences but both were committed to building the movement. Even though CARAL was sure the demonstration was a mistake, they knew once OCAC called it, they had to put everything into supporting it, even if it proved they were wrong. Here is another lesson: Unite in action, even if there are doubts.

In the days leading up to our rally, every media report of the Catholic protest announced the time and date of our rally as balance. People who had been quietly cheering on Dr. Morgentaler in the privacy of their own homes decided now was the time to show their colours. More than 15,000 people rallied at Queen’s Park, with people spilling out into the streets, then marched to the clinic. Until then, the anti-choice thought the majority sided with them, and I guess the government may have as well. But that night it was clear, as Henry had always said, “the people are with us.”

The pro-choice movement was the broadest and most successful social movement I have ever seen in Canada. We were able to turn back and marginalize a strong fanatical movement with strategies that might serve us well today in confronting the ugly rise of white supremacy and neofascism.

Related Readings

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Goodbye Trump. Now what? https://liisbeth.com/goodbye-trump-now-what/ https://liisbeth.com/goodbye-trump-now-what/#respond Tue, 24 Nov 2020 10:38:48 +0000 https://dummy-domain.xyz/?p=10819 Photo by Jon Tyson via Unsplash.   Note: At the time of writing this, Trump refuses to accept the results of the US general election. This essay explores the potential and pitfalls of a Biden/Harris Administration. A reprieve is not a victory. It’s a pause in the onslaught. It’s a time to catch your breath, […]

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Photo by Jon Tyson via Unsplash.

 

Note: At the time of writing this, Trump refuses to accept the results of the US general election. This essay explores the potential and pitfalls of a Biden/Harris Administration.

A reprieve is not a victory.

It’s a pause in the onslaught. It’s a time to catch your breath, gather the wounded and get them to healers, mourn the dead . . . but all the while keeping an eye on the horizon, knowing that the struggle continues.

U.S. feminists have been waging an uphill battle for four years. Halting the backward slide caused by Trump’s bombardment is not insignificant, but it’s not the same as making it to the top of the hill. Even with the Biden-Harris win, we’re still mired in the muck of a slippery slope with an arduous scrabble ahead of us. Trump may not be able to shove us backwards with the full weight of the Oval Office on his side, but we can’t just kick back and lift champagne flutes to shattered glass ceilings. We must still push against the weight of the crises Trump has escalated: climate, pandemic, racism, misogyny, fascism, and economic collapse.

A reprieve is not a victory.

Feminists in the United States are holding a lot of complex and even contradictory emotional responses to the elections. As we should. Our ability to articulate complexity and nuance, especially in such a polarized world, is a strength of feminism. We advance feminism’s non-binary, non-dominator values when we take the time to speak, think, and feel beyond simple sound bites. We embody feminism when we’re able/willing to hold multiple truths and beyond the duality structures of victor/loser or optimistic/pessimistic. We can feel both jubilant that the Orange Menace lost the popular vote and furious that it was a close race at all. We can feel both cautiously hopeful and cynically underwhelmed by the concept of a Biden/Harris administration. We can appreciate that Harris shattered a glass ceiling while also recognizing that non-feminist policies advanced by a female body – or any body – are still not feminist. We can feel both relieved and worried. We can feel let down and uplifted. We can feel frustrated by politics-as-usual and renewed in our commitment to making change. We can feel all of these things and so much more. Feminism is not an either/or equation.

Rivera Sun, Rivera Sun is a change-maker, a cultural creative, and novelist, and an advocate for nonviolence and social justice.

The 2020 Elections reflected this complexity. They delivered a mixture of the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

Let’s start with the good: The Squad is back and stronger than ever. If there are any politicians aligned with feminist values and policy, it’s the infamous Squad. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminded everyone: progressive platforms are winning platforms. Every candidate who backed Medicare For All won their race. All but one of the many candidates who endorsed the Green New Deal was elected to office. Fight For $15 won a number of campaigns to increase the minimum wage. Georgia’s Stacey Abrams tireless work to increase voter registration helped shift Georgia to a swing state. (It’s amazing what’s happens when we stop disenfranchising BIPOC, poor, and marginalized voters.) The Cheyenne Nation elected an all-female government for the first time. New Mexico is sending an all-women-of-color team to the US House of Representatives. Los Angeles County elected an all-female board of county commissioners. LA scored another feminist victory, Measure J, which defunds militarized police (an outgrowth of the racist patriarchy) by funding social services (a policy squarely in-line with feminist values). The Rainbow Wave sent a number of LGBTQIA candidates to public offices. Orange County, Florida, can celebrate one of the most overlooked and impressive feminist achievements: recognizing the Rights of Nature for all of their many waterways. It is crucial to recognize the role of BIPOC women in achieving all of these successes.

The bad news? Biden and Harris are behind the curve of these progressive victories. Given their track records, we know that meaningful change won’t come naturally from the Biden/Harris White House. One of the core challenges of the next four years will be pushing the federal agenda to reflect the solutionary policy proposals being advanced by BIPOC organizers, youth leaders, intergenerational movements, and women. Margaret Flowers, editor of Popular Resistance, points out, “Change doesn’t come from the top, especially within a manipulated ‘democracy’ as exists in the United States. When social transformation occurs, it follows years of educating, organizing and mobilizing at the grassroots. Elected leaders who represent that transformation ride on a wave created by social movements, not the other way around.”

As for the ugly: We know that defeating Trump is not the same thing as defeating Trumpism. And “Trumpism” is just the latest code word to describe racist, sexist, misogynistic, domination-based worldviews that eschew facts and science in order to narcissistically continue their oppression of everyone else. The exit poll statistic that angered and depressed so many feminists was that the majority of white women voted for Trump — representing at least a two-point increase for this demographic since 2016.

Kaylen Ralph said in a recent Teen Vogue article: “If internalized sexism was to blame for white women’s choice in 2016, how to explain 2020, an election in which voters had the choice between two demographically identical old white men? As a voting bloc, white women seemingly doubled down in their support of Trump, opting to align themselves against science, reproductive rights, diplomacy, and economic solvency in support of the spoils they (we?) reap as secondary benefactors of white privilege.”

Dealing with the entwined problems of white supremacy and sexism will be a crucial task for feminists in the coming years (particularly for those who are white). Dismantling the toxic privileges that white women claim through supporting politicians like Trump will take strategy, skillfulness, and focus. But what’s at stake is our collective futures. Many warn that the next fascist white supremacist candidate will be far more dangerous than Donald Trump.

So, we’ve won a reprieve, nothing more. And a reprieve is not a victory.

If we want victories, we’re going to have to take a deep breath, survey the terrain ahead, and boldly push for the change we desperately need. To do this, feminists in the United States could look beyond our borders to feminists advancing causes in powerful ways around the world. Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand won re-election in a landslide, largely because her feminist policies have protected her country from the ravages of COVID-19. In Turkey, the women rose up en masse and stopped the “family values” misogynists from dismantling protections against domestic violence. In Poland, women filled the streets to rebel against attempts to ban abortion. In Chile, the movement that won a gender-equal, citizen-driven process to craft a new constitution did so with the rallying cry, “Never again without women!”

With the Biden/Harris administration, US feminists face a chance to shift gears – not to stop the fight — but to reach with one hand into another toolbox. We can fight, yes, but we can also heal, cultivate, nurture, build, repair, restore, create, and much more. Our diverse capacities have given us the resilience, throughout millennia, to challenge and undo patriarchal injustice. More than ever, we need to utilize these capacities to push forward for meaningful change. Our complexity is our strength. Our ability to work with nuances instead of broad brush strokes is a superpower. The next few years require us to use the many tools at our disposal to ensure that feminist policy and practices are implemented in political policy – and everywhere in our society.

No, a reprieve is not a victory, but it gives us a chance to breathe, strategize, look beyond the immediate, and rise up for change in bold, unexpected, brilliant, and powerful ways.

 

Related Reading

LiisBeth Playlist #11: ELECTION DAY USA

Need a break from sitting or the news?  We thought you might. So we asked Sue Dunham (ey/em), a writer, musician, and activist who lives in the Midwest to pull together a 10 song playlist that will get you fired up, moving and by the end, hopeful no matter what happens.

Read More »

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Dispatch #20 https://liisbeth.com/dispatch-20/ https://liisbeth.com/dispatch-20/#respond Tue, 29 Nov 2016 16:19:07 +0000 http://www.liisbeth.com/?p=3292 Our Post Trump Views, the Anti-Feminist Movement and a Feminist Business Model Canvass

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VIEW POINT

Re-learning the Vocabulary of Character

I recently found exactly what I was looking for when I was least expecting it. It came in the form of a book given to me by a fellow friend and entrepreneur whom I nicknamed “Fozzie.” When the conversation inevitably turned to Donald Trump’s win, he handed me the book.

The book “The Road to Character” was written over a year ago by David Brooks, an American conservative author, and columnist for the New York Times.  I hadn’t heard of it, but it was, in fact, the second time Brooks’ name was mentioned to me that day.  I pay attention to those kinds of celestial cues. I went home and started reading it that night.

The book is about character and why we should live life as we ought to, as kind, compassionate people, and not how societies’ most recent narrative or systems tell us to. To make the point, Brooks researches the lives of outstanding people and explains why deeper “Little Me” values and concerns for a better future for all of humanity should inform our lives, rather than the “Big Me,” which emphasizes shallowness, popularity and resume virtues. Brooks’ narrative shows us what it takes to build, and what it looks like to be anchored by strong inner character (Spoiler alert-its hard). He says, ‘’Life cannot be organized like a business plan” or succeed on an “individual autonomy” platform.

His study of the topic also leads him to observe that the road to moral character “involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery.” If Brooks’ book, and before him, Leonard Cohen’s entire body of work teaches us anything, it’s that being good is not an exercise in perfection, it’s also about embracing and productively wrestling with our dark sides.

I am not surprised that Fozzie had this book on his shelf. He IS this book. Self-effacing, soothing, gracious, always questioning, and refreshingly funny and honest about how frustrating it can be when the rewards of trying to live a life of character are so invisible, sometimes even to family and friends, especially given the work and sacrifice required to sometimes really live it.

Yes, it’s hard for any business working towards financial sustainability, to have to fire an otherwise valuable leader in your company due to repeated misogynistic behavior. It takes courage to write an op-ed that you know some of your funders will disagree with. And it is especially gutsy to say no thanks to a “this will make our year” deal with a clearly racist client who treats your frontline multicultural staff inappropriately. Try to explain any one of these to your shareholders, or your kids who are hoping for something other than a “staycation” this year. Taking a stand that that advances society, but not necessarily your business or family pocketbook is hard. But that’s what people like Fozzie do.

Life cannot be organized like a business plan or succeed on an individual autonomy platform.

Not everyone appreciates Brooks’ moralizing prose. But that day, Fozzie’s gift —and what I took from it—uplifted me. It inspired me to step up my personal efforts to wade in even deeper, and work harder to embrace my still stumbling “Little Me.”

As I read, I also thought about the coming Trump era. Notably, a sense of hope emerged. With Brexit, Trump, and OMG, the growing audience for politicians like Kellie Leitch in Canada, we cannot deny that we have entered a new era that has clearly affected many of us personally, and will impact our communities and enterprises in many ways in the coming years. However, how we allow it to affect us is going to be the result of the strength of the connection between values, character, and action.
For me, Brooks’ prose strengthened my commitment to stand up, engage, and continue to collaborate with others to tackle outdated norms and systemic biases to foster a truly just, equitable and inclusive society.

Thomas Merton wrote, “Souls are like athletes that need an opponent worthy of them, if they are to be tried, and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers.”

Well, we now have a worthy opponent.

Perhaps openly misogynistic, racist and “Big Me” leaders like Trump, Bannon, and others of the same ilk, may well end up, weirdly, doing a kind of good in the long run. A bit like drinking a bottle of castor oil for good health and to relieve constipation. The reality is that we have not come very far when it comes to achieving social equity and justice, and so, we are now are the having much needed but uncomfortable conversations that we might  not have had if Clinton had won. This could be a turning point for the better, but only if we use this time to learn, widen our repertoire of knowledge and ideas, have the courage to act when we see evil, and as Brooks says, recommit to, and “relearn the vocabulary of character.”


This Week on LiisBeth
relearn-the-vocabulary-of-character-liisbeth-jj-steeves
Illustration by JJ Steeves

 

It’s Heeeeeere! Holiday season!

For many of us, it’s a busy time for ourselves and our enterprises. Often, it represents the make-or- break sales season of the year. It is a time for decorating the store, seasonal sales campaigns, company celebrations, employee bonuses, and customer appreciation cards and gifts.

But is your approach inclusive enough?

Find out in “Have Yourself a Merry Little All-Inclusive Holiday Season” in which author Valerie Hussey notes, “Designing your approach to holiday celebrations to achieve the social and cultural goals of your work and business communities makes good sense.”

Bring on Chrismukkahwanzamawlid*!

Wait! There’s more!

Also this week, Amy Kopelan is back with her column “Inside the Tent” where she offers straight up advice about how to pitch your company successfully and with confidence in front of “the boys with money”.

In the second part of “Not Your Incubator’s Entrepreneur“,  contributor Priya Ramanujam’s two-part article on what starting out as an entrepreneur is like for young women of colour, we speak with innovators who are doing the work to change the start-up space for these women, and hear what the government could do more of to ensure their multi-million dollar programs are inclusive.


LIISBETH FIELD NOTES

Understanding the Contemporary Canadian Feminist Landscape

Don’t miss this month’s Walrus article, “Whose Side Are You On, Anyway” by Lauren McKeon. In the article, Lauren investigates the world of Canadian anti-feminist organizations, bloggers, and media personalities. The article is an excerpt from her forthcoming book, which explores contemporary Canadian views on feminism.

walrus-whos-side-are-you-on-anyways-lauren-mckeon

As a person who believes the time is right for a feminist business media voice, that feminism is about gender equity for all, and that United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal #5 (Gender Equality) and #10 (Reduced Inequalities), if achieved, would solve the other 15 goals on the list, I have to admit I found the article hard to swallow.

What McKeon points out in her article with double-down force is that the anti-feminist voices at work in our society have “YUUGE” and growing audiences. For example, Judgy Bitch, a Northern Ontario-based anti-feminist blog with five million plus hits evangelizes the notion that granting women the right to vote was a big mistake. Meanwhile, pro-feminist voices like Herizon, a longtime venerated Canadian feminist magazine, has just 10,000 readers. (In case you are wondering, LiisBeth readers number just over 600).

I find an increase in these Canadian anti-feminist Breitbart-style media voices and audiences very troubling. But not surprising. Especially when so many professional women in high-profile leadership positions, also dubbed as today’s role models, are themselves quick to throw feminism under the bus.

An example of this occurred at the March 2016 Canadian Club’s Women Entrepreneurs–Canada’s Untapped Economic Engine luncheon, also the opening scene for the article. Many LiisBethians were there, including me. In fact, I was the one that asked the question “Do you consider yourself a feminist? If not, why not? Justin Trudeau does.” To find out how the panel answered, you will have to read the article. Or listen to the 45-minute podcast, an audio recording of the entire discussion.

So why do so many professional women reject feminism? In my travels, I find that often the problem is ignorance about women’s history, the movement’s history and a lack of informed appreciation about the role feminism played in opening up the many possibilities we enjoy today. Many rely on sketchy 1970s media portrayals of feminism as anti-male, and anti-woman for that matter. The fact is feminism is anything but. In my view, it is an incredibly robust, responsive and evolving movement that will keep on evolving and being as long as inequality continues to be an important social issue.

So I have three challenges for women who don’t feel comfortable with the word feminist. First, ask yourself why. Second, pick up a book and read about it. And third, if you are invited to speak about your success on a podium, begin your talk by thanking the feminists who came before you. For even if you reject feminism, the very least you can do is thank those who did not.

Toronto Anti-Trump March

Several LiisBethians decided to take part in the Anti-Trump march held on Saturday, Nov. 19. We asked those who participated to let us know what it was like. One LiisBethian was disappointed, in that for her; the rally rhetoric was not as it was billed, but about “doing away with capitalism” and that “Trump cannot be President,” which is of course not only a done deal but what the American democratic process yielded.

anti-trump-march-toronto-2016

LiisBethian Ruth Mandel had a different take. “It felt for myself and the other three fully adult, super smart, mature women I was with partly like a demonstration of resistance and partly a celebration of what we need Canada to be, without being naive about what it is but certainly confident that it remains remarkable and emblematic and needs to keep going in its expansive directions.

For Mandel, it was all: LOVE TRUMP’S HATE. She added “Then we sang ‘Oh Canada’ outside the Trump Hotel (not owned by Trump but mired in debt and controversy, of course). It was fabulous to sing our anthem!”

For those of you who missed it, and would like another opportunity to express you views, LiisBethian Marissa McTasney, founder of Moxie Trades, award-winning entrepreneur and Start Up Durham, Durham region’s chapter of Start Up Canada, is organizing an opportunity for women to join the “Women’s March on Washington” being held on Jan. 21, 2017. The organizers of this march aim to “send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. Standing together and recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.”

Details about this event will be available on Monday, Nov. 28 at www.canadianwomenmarch.ca. You can also email [email protected]. Marissa is just now working on the registration web page. We will let you all know when it’s up!

A Feminist Business Model Canvas?

Most of us have heard of Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas tool—but what do we do for Feminist Businesses? Is there a Feminist Canvas?

feminist-business-model-canvas

There are! Two of them, in fact. And a third on the way! There’s a Feminist Canvas for co-creating projects with your stakeholders, and a Feminist Canvas for scoping out a feminist product. Soon, there will also be a Feminist Canvas to help you map out your enterprise, by helping you consider more deeply things like governance, ownership structure, and power dynamics, plus how justice, equity, and systems change can be added into the design of the enterprise.

The Feminist Project Canvas and the Feminist Product Canvas are the work of CV Harquail, PhD, faculty affiliate at the Steven’s Institute of Technology (Hoboken NJ) and Lex Schroeder, feminist entrepreneur and business strategist. Together, CV and Lex are co-founders of Feminists At Work, a consultancy that is creating tools to help us take action, build products, and create businesses that put feminist values and perspectives into practice at work.

Like the Osterwalder business model Canvas and other templates, the Feminist Canvases help entrepreneurs clarify, organize and get their business ideas down on paper. Template in hand, and entrepreneur can easily share her ideas with collaborators, stakeholders, investors, and her community,building support for her vision.

What’s unique about the Feminist Canvases is that they are explicitly designed to help you work in ways that demonstrate feminist values.

LiisBeth is pretty excited about The Feminist Business Canvases — You can expect to hear more about them in the coming months. Even better, we’re planning workshops later this winter where you’ll be invited to test drive, revise, and help co-create these Canvases so that they are even more effective for supporting your own revolutionary businesses. If you want to learn more about The Feminist Project Canvas before we announce our plans, click here.


CAN’T MISS EVENTS

💃 Women on the Move is hosting its Million $ Gal-a on Thursday, Nov. 24 from 7 to 9 p.m. at their coworking space at 2111 Dundas St. W. The open event features a champagne bar sponsored by Intuit, plus speaker Julie Cole of Mabel’s Labels. If you have not been to their space, I would recommend it as well! You can register here.

✊ Calling all Social Entrepreneurs! The Community Innovation Lab has just launched their 2017 Social Enterprise Accelerator program. This early stage, co-ed incubation and training program will run from January 2017 to July 2017 and aims to support and enrich the learning experiences of social entrepreneurs in Durham Region, Northumberland, and the Kawarthas. Learn more here. And to apply click here. Only 25 spaces are available.

🎬 Gender & The Economy Film Night at Innis College! Thursday, Dec. 1, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. The film Equity will be screened from 7 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. and followed by two speakers, Carrie Blair (film investor and EVP, Sun Life Financial) and Sarah Kaplan (Professor of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management). $13.50 plus HST.


Whew! That’s it for our end of November newsletter! We will see you again on December 8th.

In the meantime, if you have comments, thoughts, story ideas or tips to share, please send them our way to [email protected].

Be fearless,

liisbeth-publisher-sig

Petra Kassun-Mutch
Founding Publisher, LiisBeth

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