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Jun. 29th, 2011 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmhttp://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/29/6970452-from-the-archives-a-message-for-the-women-of-today
History never really happened as long ago as you think. This video interview with a then 87-year-old woman who had been a suffragette was filmed when I was five. Rights that we now may take for granted here are very much things in living memory, or at least in the memories of those who knew them. Hell, in Switzerland women didn't have the vote in all the cantons until the 1970s.
When we think of the past as far away, we think of the future that way too, and it makes it seem more difficult or more foolish to fight for rights we know we deserve but can't necessarily imagine getting.
But change takes not just organizing and patience, but also anger, vision and memory.
History never really happened as long ago as you think. This video interview with a then 87-year-old woman who had been a suffragette was filmed when I was five. Rights that we now may take for granted here are very much things in living memory, or at least in the memories of those who knew them. Hell, in Switzerland women didn't have the vote in all the cantons until the 1970s.
When we think of the past as far away, we think of the future that way too, and it makes it seem more difficult or more foolish to fight for rights we know we deserve but can't necessarily imagine getting.
But change takes not just organizing and patience, but also anger, vision and memory.
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Date: 2011-06-29 03:38 pm (UTC)Having family there makes the perspective an interesting one. You're still allowed to stay home with your kids, for one thing and keep a job on a percentage basis. Telling them I *have* to work as much as I do just gets a blank stare. We're supposed to be a civilized nation, after all.