©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
SLOGAN
“Be safe, be smart, and keep your eye on the future: #5050x2028!”
EBLAST April 9, 2021:
Subject: Pushing on an Open Door
Dear Jennifer,
Let’s take stock:
- Ten women confirmed in a few short weeks in the new Administration’s Cabinet.
- Many more in the pipeline for leadership posts throughout the federal government.
- Barely a ripple with some of the most strategic nominations and confirmations.
What a moment. What a wave.
What’s left? As women receive wide acceptance in positions of expertise, influence, and leadership in the national life we share, WCF bangs the drum for more of what it took to get them there: commitment to women in office.
Yes, acceptance is a true milestone. Commitment is what turns that historic precedent into #50502028.
How do we define acceptance? How about this: on the first day of a new Administration, Avril Haines, the first ever female Director of National Intelligence, gets confirmed by the Senate with a vote of 84–10. That Senate. The one split down the middle between Republicans and Democrats. The whole contentious crowd swings widely in her favor.
Then this. It makes the news. Yet not as an unexpected event. Few, if any, of the tired questions. Not even: Is the intelligence community ready for a woman Director?
So, okay, we’re seeing acceptance. Now we need to crank up the commitment.
Commitment to making sure every one of these women is heard and her impact is noted far beyond the office she occupies. Commitment to leveraging acceptance into expectation of a wide field of qualified women for every office on which we vote. Commitment to more than an organic “if we build it, they will come” approach.
We need every action we can imagine to ensure that the door is open ever wider from this moment forward, until we don’t even notice a door exists.
Let’s make a commitment to talking about that — to friends, family, young people, big shots — throughout this month and beyond. Make this Spring moment the one in which the seasons changed — for good, for all of us.
We’ll be in touch from time to time about other topics in the coming weeks. We share your fatigue with too much email — all of it urgent. So how about we simply say thank you today and trust that you’ll carry the call for commitment with you wherever the winds may blow. Know that we will!
And, oh, the places we’ll go!
With thanks,
Georgia Berner, Chair & Monica Worth, Executive Director
Women’s Campaign Fund
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST March 10, 2021:
Subject: Be the Leader You Seek
Dear Jennifer,
After a bruising couple of months in which we’ve toggled between the “refresh” and the “rerun” buttons — opportunities for unity and division, hope and despair — where do we stand?
Well, that’s up to you and me.
Will you be the seed of division or the soul of connection? Will we be the answer we’re looking for or the ones always questioning whether it’s worth it? Will you and each of us, quite simply, be the leaders we seek?
Nobody has a crystal ball. Everybody has more tools than we realize to make the future. Add a couple new ones to your toolkit:
Not knowing. The unknown is hard to manage these days. So don’t.
We don’t know what’s going to happen anyway.
Remember how worry works? Most of what we worry about never comes to pass.
This isn’t denial of the truly rough stuff going on. It’s recognizing that moment when all that can be done is to ride the fast current. Look back! Realize how fast the toughest rapids have gotten you someplace you couldn’t imagine leaving now.
Not believing. The power — the very biology — of belief is better understood today than at any time in human history.
We know now that your brain wraps the things you think and use most in a form of insulation that makes those neural pathways fire fastest.
Only thing is, that means our past is running our future.
Do we want our past to run the future?
Nothing changes in the brain until we actively — and continually — reach for things that unsettle our familiar patterns.
New worlds! So easy and so discoverable!
One way to sharpen all our tools is to offer each other the best we see in each other and build our days and our future from what we learn on that level. Sort of like choosing the DIY channel over endlessly scrolling the emotional porn of crimes, cruelty, even puppies and Hallmark love — not to mention COVID — for something that stirs our pot.
Want to stir the soul of common ground? It’s not in the one or two things we can all agree on. It’s in the human appetite for expanding the possibilities, doing more than we imagined by doing what the American dream is rooted in. Our brand of democracy: making room, giving a little, figuring it out. Knowing there is always more than one way to get things done.
A beloved family member used to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” That thought changes a person’s history. Know any other women who get that, have that compassion, stay grounded in that reality?
It’s time! Help them step up. Ask them to change history for you — on the school board, as a mayor, as a governor. Invest in them. Be one of them!
Seize the moment. Let this swift water deliver us to roughly 50/50 faster than we could ever have imagined.
Why wait? Put it in writing! Here’s a simple letter to encourage a friend or other woman to run for office. Write it to yourself!
All the best,
Georgia Berner, Chair & Monica Worth, Executive Director
Women’s Campaign Fund
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST January 20, 2021:
Subject: 50.50. Leadership.
Jennifer,
When we took the moonshot of setting 2028 as the due date of 50/50 men and women in elected office, we imagined a bright day in which a woman in the White House would be the norm.
Yet, somehow, today came so much sooner than a lofty vision usually does. Yes, women running for President became normal — quickly. Then suddenly, today, as we welcome our first female vice president, the first woman to serve in one of the two highest offices in the land, the first Black woman and the first Asian American to serve in that capacity… well, it is a little astonishing to say…
Vice President Kamala Harris!
Even as we call for 50/50, we still marvel just a bit that the top two leaders of these United States are a 50/50 team.
Goodness. Gracious. 50/50 leadership has ARRIVED.
We all know being “United States” is harder than we might ever have imagined. Still, we cannot forget where we stand — right now, already — and we must hold high the opportunities it presents.
A global pandemic rocked us to our core, but we now have an opportunity to rebuild our healthcare systems and our economic systems to better lift up ALL people.
Americans took to the streets and provided leaders with an opportunity to demand our nation do more to ensure we treat all humans with the dignity and respect you, we, all deserve.
#MeToo exposed ugly seams of harassment and exploitation in the very bedrock of institutions and industries, but now we have an opportunity to ensure the conversation includes respect for and tolerance of the truth and change that needs to come.
50/50 in the highest office in the land is one enormous step forward. It delivers great news: We’re pushing on an open door as we lean into the final lap, sprinting toward #5050x2028.
Now, it’s your support that will blow the race wide open, ushering in a new era of expectations — and leadership — across this nation.
No time to lose getting far more women into elected office as we embrace these opportunities to create the new normal!
We need compassion, humility, and collaboration — hallmarks of women’s strength — to move common ground solutions into the big, systemic issues that impact us all.
For today, our message is simple: Congratulations, Madam Vice President!
Tomorrow, it’s simple, too: You hold the promise of where we go from here, building on what we see before our very eyes.
– Women’s Campaign Fund
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST January 16, 2021:
Subject: How can we spark something new?
Jennifer,
At a moment of what seems like unyielding division in our nation, we may not realize that more people than at any time in recent memory may be on the move toward positive change.
Many regular folks that anger and violence sought to attract may be permanently locking that door and looking for another way to get on with the business of running the country. Even you, and others like you, looking at what’s going on in politics, searching for a better way forward, may actually find the answer in this moment.
Most people are capable of something more than what we saw last week. Most people will hear and consider fresh information. How do we know that? How can we spark something new among the majority of our fellow citizens in this really tough moment?
Decades of studies on how people adopt change show that people come to it in waves. A small group of people with early insights can eventually spread their best ideas — in two or three big waves — to the vast majority of the much larger community. What the studies also show is that about 16% of people will never come on board. Sometimes laws even change to make sure others aren’t harmed by that — think seatbelts, airbags, car seats.
Another thing the research makes clear is that the people who help trigger each positive wave are simply folks other people look to — in general — for good ideas. If most people in our culture share such similar inclinations — have that much in common — you’re probably not all that different from most people! So, have some faith in one another.
Then ask yourself: Are we using all the available talent and skill to go forward, filling Congress (and all our elected offices) with the best people we’ve got? Can we do that if we leave, say, half the population in the dugout?
From that angle, #5050x2028 sure looks like common sense.
And about those influencers who fuel the waves: You can be one simply by having thoughtful conversations with others about the importance of roughly 50/50 representation. So, let’s talk about it!
One more thing to do. Ask yourself: Is one of the people we most need at the table someone like me? If the answer is yes, well… why not you?
– Women’s Campaign Fund
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST January 9, 2021:
Subject: Answers will come
The answers to this week’s questions will come. Our newly elected women and their experienced sisters in office face policy decisions about what is happening — and an unprecedented chance to come together around new common ground.
Let’s take a moment to wish them godspeed.
May they use every ounce of their substantial wisdom, strength, and skill.
And may we be grateful that they are safe, and there for us.
Why not send a Congresswoman a note of thanks, if the spirit moves you?
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST January 4, 2021:
Subject: How did your conversations go this holiday season?
Jennifer,
We just came off another holiday season where many of us relished time with friends and family — however virtual. Whatever way you did your connecting and whoever it was with, talk probably drifted toward politics…
Was it a productive conversation? Or did you want to bang your head against a wall?
How about we all pinky-swear that the conversation will be different this year? Let’s start with the conversation you have with yourself. When you give yourself a minute to look inside, reach deep for what you know to be your best reasons for being on this planet — your highest worth. It lives in all of us, no matter how much wear our souls have weathered. From there, it is so much easier to see the “divine” in others.
And that’s the turning point. YOU can be a vehicle for change simply by thoughtfully talking with others from that place.
Why is that important to 50/50 representation? Because it’s not about R’s or D’s, us or them, women or men or any slice of gender being better or worse. It’s about bringing the best we’ve got to the rooms where decisions get made — 100% of our talent, wisdom, and skill — strengthening our outcomes with the most basic balance of life experience.
From there, we gain all the riches of what life has taught each individual who comes to the table. Fill elected offices with the best people we’ve got? Make sure they represent the strongest foundation of insights and experience? Well, that begs the question: Why not? And why wait? #5050x2028 is just common sense.
To kick off the new year, take a moment. Find the best in you. Then kick off a different kind of conversation with friends, loved ones, anyone you know. Take the #5050x2028 pledge and then look around. Who else in your world deserves that kind of common sense representation?
Share the pledge with your networks — and talk with them about what they really think! Get a conversation going!
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST January 1, 2021:
Subject: To a VERY new year!
Jennifer,
As we turn forward from this holiday season, I’m deeply moved by something I learned in the uncertain days of November.
Truth is, for all our talk, nobody has a lock on the high road, left or right. It is open for everyone, unexplored. Full of potential, ripe for curiosity. No map. Navigated turn by turn.
Where does it take us?
Sometimes to very far and unknown places. I had the good fortune last month to speak with an amazing, prolific, and best-selling author from India, Amish Tripathi. He writes about Indian mythology in the genre of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. We had a wonderful, wide-ranging conversation about changes in culture, the way of the world, the strength of bowing to the divine in each other. And about democracies hinging — perilously — on finding balance.
These days, many among us, left and right, treat each other horribly for holding political views we can’t stand. We speak of each other — not just our leaders — as liars and idiots, intentional in destroying our cherished ways. We vent those frustrations on social media, feeling vindicated even when we implicate friends.
Intriguingly, in the language of the ancient people of India, there was no word for evil. If there is no word for evil, who or what can we hold responsible? Ourselves.
We have to walk away from the damage of hatred and disagreement and name-calling. Walking away from it would be turning towards an age-old Indian greeting that ripples on many levels: “I bow to the divine within you.” Namaste.
That single word eases the pain, erases the judgment, focuses upon the good within each of us, no matter how big or how small. Try it. Put your own oxygen mask on first: bow to the divine within you. Turn to your neighbors and your neighbors’ neighbors — every one of them — and bow to the divine within them.
What is a bow? A sign of reverence, gratitude, recognition, respect.
Focus on what we know to be the good in each of us. In all of us. No. Matter. What. It’s a recipe for common ground. For solutions that last.
And now we head from the old year, 2020 — to the new year, 2021. Let us take with us that it’s not about what our leaders have done or haven’t. It’s about our response.
Namaste,
Georgia Berner, Chair
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST November 19, 2020:
Subject: Let’s take a walk on the high road — and let’s stay there.
Dear all,
Truth is, for all our talk, nobody has a lock on the high road, left or right. It is open for everyone, unexplored. Full of potential, ripe for curiosity. No map. Navigated turn by turn.
Where does it take us?
I had the good fortune last week to speak with an amazing , prolific, and bestselling author from India, Amish Tripathi. He writes about Indian mythology in the genre of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. We had a wonderful, wide-ranging conversation about changes in culture, the way of the world, the strength of bowing to the divine in each other. And about democracies hinging — perilously — on finding balance.
These days, many among us, left and right, treat each other horribly for holding political views we can’t stand. We speak of each other — not just our leaders — as liars and idiots, intentional in destroying our cherished ways. We vent those frustrations on social media, feeling vindicated even when we implicate friends.
Intriguingly, Tripathi’s ancient culture has no word for evil. If there is no word for evil, who or what can we hold responsible? Ourselves.
We have to walk away from the damage of hatred and disagreement and name calling. It is not surprising that people in India have a word for it: “I bow to the divine within you.” Namaste.
That single word eases the pain, erases the judgment, focuses upon the good within each of us, no matter how big or how small. Try it. Put your own oxygen mask on first: bow to the divine within you. Turn to your neighbors and your neighbors’ neighbors — every one of them — and bow to the divine within them.
What is a bow? A sign of reverence, gratitude, recognition, respect.
Focus on what we know to be the good in each of us. In all of us. No. Matter. What. It’s a recipe for common ground. For solutions that last.
Ultimately, it’s not about what our leaders have done or haven’t. It’s about our response.
Namaste,
Georgia
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
EBLAST June 9, 2020:
Subject: The time has come! The time to share with you WCF’s new agenda and website.
Greetings,
The time has come! The time to share with you WCF’s new agenda and website.
#5050x2028.
* Roughly half women in all elected offices.
* Not a quota, a crossroads, where we come together as a nation of women and men, of men and women.
* Not someday. Within this decade.
* Not just any women. Women with what it takes to win and create good government.
What difference will it make?
What evidence do we have that electing women will make a difference? Lots!
Look at what a small number of women have tackled so far!
* Finance: Fair credit. Equitable pay and retirement income. Better enforcement of child support.
* Health care: Women’s needs and bodies in health care research — breast cancer, cervical cancer, smoking.
* Safety: Protecting victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Fighting trafficking of women and girls.
* Military: Addressing the needs of active duty women and veterans.
* Education: Opening up STEAM for women and girls.
Who did all that?
The Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. Most of the time with fewer women than we have in Congress now.
Women get things done.
Case in point: state legislatures. Those with 30% or more women passed more bills in 2018 and 2019 — by women and men — than those with more men. And women lawmakers in the minority party are found to be more likely to collaborate across the aisle.
Women lead in a crisis.
90 women — 48 Democrats, 40 Republicans, 2 non-partisans — are running states as Governors, Attorneys General, and beyond, managing the current civil unrest. 59 women are leading the response in America’s cities — including seven African-American mayors in hotspots like Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, DC.
WCF used to focus on issues. Our job now is to strengthen the platform on which all issues are decided by exponentially increasing the number of women in all elected offices nationwide.
And let me say: between the pandemic and the civil rights protests, WE HAVE NO TIME TO LOSE getting more women into elected office.
#5050x2028 matters. First, because it’s common sense. Second, because it brings all of us to the table, working against the divide and for the solutions. This is a time when we couldn’t need both more.
We are a virtual workplace, lean, innovative, and evidence-oriented. Our new website, www.wcfonline.org , is built to drive broad action from a big base. Please sign up with us, stay in touch, pay attention. If you’re interested, I’m attaching a quick reference tool we use internally to sum up how we get from here to there.
We are moving. Forward! Write or call me — we have work to do! Together!
-Georgia
©2021 Women’s Campaign Fund
#5050x2028
