http://www.gift-economy.com/wedo_12.html
Video of Mal Johnson - Media Linx, Washington, DC
Training women to utilize the Media. Interviewed by Trella Laughlin
Interviewed at the World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet in Miami, Florida, in 1991
Monday, November 28, 2011
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Mal's dream of a US IAWRT Chapter realized
Arshiya Ahsan has just convented the first meeting of a US chapter of the International Association of Women in Radio & TV! This was a longtime dream of Mal Johnson's. Her close friends Catherine White and Leila Doss were involved in helping get this chapter started. Here are two communications from Arshiya about the meeting. I the second, she says "This is for Mal." - Frieda
Dear Olya,
It is my pleasure to announce that today, May 24th, 2010, seven lovely women with the blessing of Ms. Leila Doss, met in New York in a very simple setting and signed on a simple consent document to form IAWRT-USA Chapter:)
We really enjoyed our meeting and what we accomplished tonight as a really diverse team. This is our first step...
Official details will be sent soon in our May update to the IAWRT international board.
Thank you all for all the support.
Kind regards,
Arshiya Ahsan
IAWRT-USA member
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Knowing Mal Johnson--
My association with IAWRT started at the IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival in New Delhi organized by Jai Chandiram in 2005. It was a very good first impression of the organization and of an interesting chapter. I was not able to participate much in India because of my work in East-Africa. In the same year, my personal contact with Mal Johnson started which was both wonderful and sad at the same time.
The wonderful part was when I interacted with her briefly during 2005--Mal was organizing the Williamsburg conference that time and I was in Kampala, Uganda. During this short period of intense interaction, I saw her commitment for IAWRT and she really tried her best to bring me to the conference. I had written to her about my ideas of creating awareness about a network like IAWRT in East-Africa and how important it can be for women in the region. I also talked about my travels to Rwanda for IAWRT and she was happy that there were members who wanted to expand IAWRT network.
The sad part was when I came to the US in 2007, Mal was sick, and I tried to meet her but could not:(
Many of us have personal stories and dreams regarding the formation of IAWRT-USA-- I guess, my destiny maybe, just allowed me to bring all these amazing stories together--nothing more, nothing less.
This is for Mal--
Love,
Arshiya
Dear Olya,
It is my pleasure to announce that today, May 24th, 2010, seven lovely women with the blessing of Ms. Leila Doss, met in New York in a very simple setting and signed on a simple consent document to form IAWRT-USA Chapter:)
We really enjoyed our meeting and what we accomplished tonight as a really diverse team. This is our first step...
Official details will be sent soon in our May update to the IAWRT international board.
Thank you all for all the support.
Kind regards,
Arshiya Ahsan
IAWRT-USA member
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Knowing Mal Johnson--
My association with IAWRT started at the IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival in New Delhi organized by Jai Chandiram in 2005. It was a very good first impression of the organization and of an interesting chapter. I was not able to participate much in India because of my work in East-Africa. In the same year, my personal contact with Mal Johnson started which was both wonderful and sad at the same time.
The wonderful part was when I interacted with her briefly during 2005--Mal was organizing the Williamsburg conference that time and I was in Kampala, Uganda. During this short period of intense interaction, I saw her commitment for IAWRT and she really tried her best to bring me to the conference. I had written to her about my ideas of creating awareness about a network like IAWRT in East-Africa and how important it can be for women in the region. I also talked about my travels to Rwanda for IAWRT and she was happy that there were members who wanted to expand IAWRT network.
The sad part was when I came to the US in 2007, Mal was sick, and I tried to meet her but could not:(
Many of us have personal stories and dreams regarding the formation of IAWRT-USA-- I guess, my destiny maybe, just allowed me to bring all these amazing stories together--nothing more, nothing less.
This is for Mal--
Love,
Arshiya
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Mal Johnson and National Council of Women's Organizations
Mal was a longtime member of the NCWO and served on their board. Here's their most recent flier - Mal is the left of the three faces on the front.
Monday, January 21, 2008
A colleague of Mal's has also passed on
Mal's memorial service was held at the National Press Club - where Mal's memorial service in Washington Was held. Frances Lewine was a leader in the fight to open the Press Club to women. Like Mal, she was a longtime White House correspondent. Thanks to Sonia Pressman Fuentes and Laura X for passing this along. - FW
From CNNPolitics.com Jan 21, 2008
Francis Lewine, trailblazing journalist, dies
Frances Lewine, who died at age 86, battled for women's rights in journalism
In 1965, she became AP's first full-time female White House correspondent
For nearly three decades, she was a CNN assignment editor and field producer
Was part of sex discrimination suit against AP that led to changes at news group
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Frances Lewine, who covered the White House for the Associated Press during the administrations of six presidents and spent nearly three decades as a CNN assignment editor and field producer, died Saturday of an apparent stroke. She was 86.
Jacqueline Kennedy, right, pours tea for AP correspondent Frances Lewine, left, in 1960.
Lewine was regarded as a trailblazer who battled for women's rights in journalism, fighting to open the National Press Club and the Gridiron Club -- a Washington journalists' organization -- to women.
She was assigned to the White House in 1956 to cover the activities of first ladies and the Washington social scene, but in 1965 became the AP's first full-time female White House correspondent.
"She through perseverance and dedication expanded her role to include presidents," Lewine wrote in a personal account of her life.
In 1977, she left AP to join the administration of President Jimmy Carter, and became the Department of Transportation's deputy director of public affairs. When Carter left office in 1981, Lewine moved to the newly created Cable News Network -- at age 60 -- as an assignment editor and field producer.
Sunday would have been Lewine's 87th birthday, co-workers said. She had been recovering from surgery, but was expected to return to the office as soon as this week.
Lewine was born in 1921 in New York and grew up in Far Rockaway, Long Island. She graduated from New York's Hunter College, where she edited the college newspaper and worked as a reporter for the Plainfield, New Jersey, Courier-News before moving to the Newark AP bureau.
Lewine wrote that she began covering the White House full time "with the arrival of the glamorous young Kennedys" and recalled that her working attire often was an evening dress.
She accompanied the family to Vienna, Paris, Rome and followed first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on a vacation trip to India and Pakistan, as well as two yachting excursions in the Mediterranean.
On one of those trips, the first lady's staff attempted to keep reporters in Athens, Greece, Lewine recalled. But she and several other journalists on a rented yacht followed her from island to island and, "much to the anger of the White House," kept track of the first lady's activities by listening in on ship-to-shore radio.
Lewine's wrote that she was often frustrated at being "relegated to social and family stories and sidebars while male colleagues covered the president."
She wrote that it was a "source of disappointment and anger" that the AP never considered her an equal to male White House colleagues.
That anger, she wrote, energized her "to become a leader in the movement of women journalists in the 1950s, 60s and 70s to protest discrimination against women in their jobs and assignments."
To protest the Gridiron Club's policy against women, Lewine founded the "Counter-Gridiron." A group of women reporters and sympathetic male reporters met regularly at her home to organize protests, she recalled. Eventually, she was the second woman invited to join the Gridiron.
Lewine was one of six plaintiffs in a sex-discrimination suit filed against the AP, which was settled out of court for $2 million and changed the news organization's policies.
Lewine was also a member of the National Press Club, Executive Women in Government and the Society of Professional Journalists. She was elected to the Washington Society of Professional Journalists' Hall of Fame and to the Hunter College Hall of Fame.
Last year, she was awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the highest honor bestowed by the Missouri School of Journalism.
From CNNPolitics.com Jan 21, 2008
Francis Lewine, trailblazing journalist, dies
Frances Lewine, who died at age 86, battled for women's rights in journalism
In 1965, she became AP's first full-time female White House correspondent
For nearly three decades, she was a CNN assignment editor and field producer
Was part of sex discrimination suit against AP that led to changes at news group
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Frances Lewine, who covered the White House for the Associated Press during the administrations of six presidents and spent nearly three decades as a CNN assignment editor and field producer, died Saturday of an apparent stroke. She was 86.
Jacqueline Kennedy, right, pours tea for AP correspondent Frances Lewine, left, in 1960.
Lewine was regarded as a trailblazer who battled for women's rights in journalism, fighting to open the National Press Club and the Gridiron Club -- a Washington journalists' organization -- to women.
She was assigned to the White House in 1956 to cover the activities of first ladies and the Washington social scene, but in 1965 became the AP's first full-time female White House correspondent.
"She through perseverance and dedication expanded her role to include presidents," Lewine wrote in a personal account of her life.
In 1977, she left AP to join the administration of President Jimmy Carter, and became the Department of Transportation's deputy director of public affairs. When Carter left office in 1981, Lewine moved to the newly created Cable News Network -- at age 60 -- as an assignment editor and field producer.
Sunday would have been Lewine's 87th birthday, co-workers said. She had been recovering from surgery, but was expected to return to the office as soon as this week.
Lewine was born in 1921 in New York and grew up in Far Rockaway, Long Island. She graduated from New York's Hunter College, where she edited the college newspaper and worked as a reporter for the Plainfield, New Jersey, Courier-News before moving to the Newark AP bureau.
Lewine wrote that she began covering the White House full time "with the arrival of the glamorous young Kennedys" and recalled that her working attire often was an evening dress.
She accompanied the family to Vienna, Paris, Rome and followed first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on a vacation trip to India and Pakistan, as well as two yachting excursions in the Mediterranean.
On one of those trips, the first lady's staff attempted to keep reporters in Athens, Greece, Lewine recalled. But she and several other journalists on a rented yacht followed her from island to island and, "much to the anger of the White House," kept track of the first lady's activities by listening in on ship-to-shore radio.
Lewine's wrote that she was often frustrated at being "relegated to social and family stories and sidebars while male colleagues covered the president."
She wrote that it was a "source of disappointment and anger" that the AP never considered her an equal to male White House colleagues.
That anger, she wrote, energized her "to become a leader in the movement of women journalists in the 1950s, 60s and 70s to protest discrimination against women in their jobs and assignments."
To protest the Gridiron Club's policy against women, Lewine founded the "Counter-Gridiron." A group of women reporters and sympathetic male reporters met regularly at her home to organize protests, she recalled. Eventually, she was the second woman invited to join the Gridiron.
Lewine was one of six plaintiffs in a sex-discrimination suit filed against the AP, which was settled out of court for $2 million and changed the news organization's policies.
Lewine was also a member of the National Press Club, Executive Women in Government and the Society of Professional Journalists. She was elected to the Washington Society of Professional Journalists' Hall of Fame and to the Hunter College Hall of Fame.
Last year, she was awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the highest honor bestowed by the Missouri School of Journalism.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Mal Johnson's bio
Mal Johnson sent this resume to her friend Lyn Voss in 2006, to be used by Federally Employed Women:
MAL JOHNSON
7237 Worsley Way
Alexandria VA 22315
C A R E E R H I S T O R Y
Mal Johnson was employed by Cox Enterprises, Broadcast Division for 27 years in the Cox Washington News Bureau. After leaving the company in 2000, she created her own media consulting firm, Medialinx International, where she offers a variety of specialized media services, public service productions and training. Johnson continues to pursue her considerably active participation worldwide in the media and in the women’s movement.
Mal Johnson was the first female reporter employed in the Cox Washington News Bureau and their first correspondent assigned to the White House.. She covered five U.S. presidents, reporting extensively from numerous countries of the world. She was among the White House Press Corp when President Nixon made his historical visits to Russia and China, and his equally historic resignation from the Presidency. During her years as a reporter, she also covered Capitol Hill, the State Department and various Federal agencies. Before joining the Washington Bureau she worked at WKBS-TV, Philadelphia.
In 1980, Johnson was promoted to Senior Washington Correspondent and assigned additional duties as National Director of Community Affairs. In this management position, she established linkages with communities nationwide and produced programs reflecting community issues. Before turning to a broadcasting career, Johnson taught school, first in Philadelphia where she was born, grew up, was educated, and later taught in Europe and on Guam in the Marianas Islands of the Pacific.
Broadcasting, Civil Rights and the Feminist Movements have been the important elements of Mal Johnson’s professional career and activist work. Her service on several boards reflects her interests. She is past Vice President and current Main Representative at the United Nations of the International Association of Women In Radio and Television, an organization headquartered in India,. Johnson serves on the board of the Communications Consortium Media Center; the former Vice President of the board of the U.S. Committee for UNIFEM, Secretary of the board of the Hospital for Sick Children. Currently she is the Secretary of the board of the Gold Star Military Widows of America, and Co-chair of the National Women’s Conference. She serves on the Steering Committee of the National Council of Women’s Organizations. Johnson is a Founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs. She is a former National Chair of the American Women In Radio and Television Foundation and President of the Washington Chapter of AWRT..
Johnson participated in the U N World Conferences on Women in Mexico City, Houston, Copenhagen, Nairobi , Beijing and at the United Nations. She created Global Focus: Women In Art and Culture, a project of 880 art works that were exhibited, in Beijing, by women artists depicting issues concerning women. Johnson is a seasoned speaker and recipient of many media and civil rights activist awards. She was inducted in the Journalists Hall of Fame in 2000. A television Documentary of her life’s story is included in the Archives of the HistoryMakers of America. She is the author of numerous papers on media, co-author of “Moving History Forward: A Woman’s National Action Agenda and Co-editor of 50 Ways to Improve the Lives of Women.
Among her many awards, Johnson has been honored with the Foremothers of America Award, Trailblazer Award and the Woman of Strength Award.
Mal Johnson is the widow of an Air Force officer and shares her home with her Persian cat, Lady MacBeth..
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
audio online: Mal Johnson's interview of Wangari Maathai
To hear this, visit www.wings.org and click on Archives.
Then use your browser to search for Johnson, or just scroll down to #29-04. You need Windows Media Player. This was a really great interview Mal did for WINGS, which was re-issued when Wangari was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mal also gets a credit on #11-07, which was adapted down from a longer video that she helped me produce for the International Women's Roundtable. She speaks in the video, but not in the shorter radio piece.
Description of WINGS #29-04:
WANGARI MAATHAI RETROSPECTIVE Time: 29:00 From the WINGS archive, Wangari Maathai’s address to UNIFEM, September 7, 1990, recorded by Mal Johnson. Maathai explains with wit and candor the politics, the economics and the practical side of the Greenbelt Movement, including its origin in the Kenyan women’s movement. In an interview, Maathai tells Johnson about her struggle with the Kenyan ruling party over plans for a 62-story skyscraper in a public park. It was a pivotal moment for Maathai, who would go on to be beaten and jailed, then run for President, and then become Deputy Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife when a new government finally arrived. On October 8, 2004, Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Her selection reflects a new understanding in the Nobel Committee about the relationships between environment, democracy, women’s rights, and peace.
--Frieda Werden, producer, WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service
Then use your browser to search for Johnson, or just scroll down to #29-04. You need Windows Media Player. This was a really great interview Mal did for WINGS, which was re-issued when Wangari was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mal also gets a credit on #11-07, which was adapted down from a longer video that she helped me produce for the International Women's Roundtable. She speaks in the video, but not in the shorter radio piece.
Description of WINGS #29-04:
WANGARI MAATHAI RETROSPECTIVE Time: 29:00 From the WINGS archive, Wangari Maathai’s address to UNIFEM, September 7, 1990, recorded by Mal Johnson. Maathai explains with wit and candor the politics, the economics and the practical side of the Greenbelt Movement, including its origin in the Kenyan women’s movement. In an interview, Maathai tells Johnson about her struggle with the Kenyan ruling party over plans for a 62-story skyscraper in a public park. It was a pivotal moment for Maathai, who would go on to be beaten and jailed, then run for President, and then become Deputy Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife when a new government finally arrived. On October 8, 2004, Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Her selection reflects a new understanding in the Nobel Committee about the relationships between environment, democracy, women’s rights, and peace.
--Frieda Werden, producer, WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service
Mal and the National Women's Conference Committee
Mal was very active with the National Women's Conference Committee, which works to implement the results of the US's only formally conducted National Women's Conference, held in Houston in 1977. Mal isn't mentioned in this writeup of "How the National Plan of Action for Women Came Into Being," by Susanna Downie, but I'm sure she was involved.
Mal was also co-chair of the committee that organized the 20-year anniversary celebration of that Houston conference. The celebration took place in Washington DC in 1997. Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan were both still alive and they spoke and they physically passed the actual torch from the original conference to the younger generation. Mal was very wonderful at organizing events that had just enough pomp and ceremony and also time to talk. Here's a writeup about the 1997 conference, still to be found online at http://www2.edc.org/WomensEquity/edequity97/0302.html - it quotes Mal and credits her:
-----------------
Mal was really pleased to have been invited to this conference in Little Rock in October 2006, to share the podium with Bella Abzug's daughter Liz, among others. It was to plan the 30th anniversary of the 1977 Houston Women's Conference. I know Mal was very concerned about whether health would permit her to attend this Arkansas meeting for the 30th anniversary, and I can't remember if she attended or not. Perhaps a reader will post a comment about this.
http://www.nwhp.org/news/conference.php
-----------------
Note to researchers: If you start searching for "National Women's Conference Committee" as a term, you will find truly amazing activities that they have been involved in at not only national but also state levels, working to implement the National Plan of Action. A real must for any research on the impact of Mal Johnson, among others.
--------------
I first got to know Mal when I attended a meeting in St. Louis of the National Women's Conference Committee board, in I think the spring of 1992. I was looking for support for a radio project that I wanted to do. Mal and Sarah Harder liked the idea, and they put me in touch with Martha Burk as well. I think Sarah Harder, a very close friend of Mal's, was then President of what at that time was the Council of Presidents of Women's Organizations, but later evolved into the National Council of Women's Organizations. Martha Burk later became president of this group. Mal helped me design the radio project, and she worked for it, too. It wasn't possible to get any direct endorsement or support from the Council of Presidents, because it was just a coalition and not an organization in itself, but with the help of Sandy Suffian in Kansas City, we raised about $4,000 for the project from NCWO member groups, and the groups provided participants for the programs (it was a two-part series, but all recorded in one day). The project was a multi-city broadcast, with one studio a public radio studio in New York (where Marlene Sanders was the host), and one studio on Capitol Hill in Washington that was owned by the Democratic Party. We used an ISDN line that NPR owned to link those two cities, and then used the Public Radio Satellite Service to have the signal brought back live to the studio where I was monitoring and recording it, in Kansas City. I did a quick edit and released it on the Public Radio Satellite Service, as "National Women's Agenda 1992: What Women Want and How They Plan to Win It." Mal was the producer in the Washington studio.
Mal Johnson loved satellite links, and was very proud to have been involved in setting up an IntelSat satellite connection between the US and the UN's third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1995. (Later, she and I together toured the Worldspace satellite radio facility and also the XM satellite radio facility in Washington. And in 2005 we took the delegates from the International Association of Women in Radio & TV [IAWRT] conference on a tour of XM.)
The National Women's Agenda, referred to in the program's title, was (probably still is) an agenda agreed to annually among the various US women's organizations working in coalition - identifying, from the numerous goals in the National Women's Plan of Action, a few goals to be highlighted and worked on in the year ahead. I think the only gift Mal ever gave me (aside from her friendship and wisdom and conversation and sometimes a place to stay) was a copy of the National Women's Plan of Action, published by the US government shortly after the 1977 National Women's Conference. This was a very precious and rare treasure. Jimmy Carter, who was President in '77, was appalled by the very progressive and far-reaching conclusions in the plan, and so only a few copies were published and then the book largely disappeared. If you find a copy, and maybe in Mal's effects there will be several, don't throw it away! There was a partial version republished later, I think by WEDO (Bella Abzug's last NGO), to mark an anniversary of the conference. The Carter administration (much less the Reagan one and subsequent) refused to pony up any money for implementation of the National Women's Plan of Action, even though the Congress - thanks to Bella Abzug - had put up several million dollars to have the formal structure implemented: delegates elected at state conferences who then met in Houston and voted on the planks of the National Women's Plan of Action. It was the only formal mechanism ever put in place to determine the will of American women. Anyway, the National Women's Conference Committee went ahead and worked on implementation of the Plan every way they could given that there wasn't any money. In the end, they decided that the most cost effective way to work was at the state level. In 1992, there were committees in about 20 US states.
I'm writing this off the top of my memory - a real history needs to be written. Again, researchers, you have your work cut out for you! Mal was on the NWCC board, and as I recall in 1992 she was representing Federally Employed Women. Even though she wasn't federally employed herself, she had worked closely with women in government as she covered the federal government for Cox.
(Funny, I keep thinking that Mal will read this and that I'll call her up and she'll tell me what parts I got wrong!)
One of Mal's greatest frustrations was the inability to launch a media caucus of the National Council of Women's Organizations. She was always on the verge of doing it, but so far it never flew; she said she couldn't get it prioritized by the Council - from what I gather, they paid lip service, but they didn't put energy into mobilizing it. Mal would never usurp the President of any organization she worked with - she had a strong sense of appropriate protocol, which is probably one reason she was such a popular board member. That, and the fact that she worked like the dickens. She and I wrote a grant proposal a couple of years ago in response to a one-time Request for Proposals from the Women Donors' Network. If our plan had been funded, it would have provided $250,000 a year to put media at the top of the National Women's Agenda for four years, funding media events at the national level and local levels for the member organizations to work with the democratic media movement. What made it possible to even write NCWO into such a proposal was the fact that NCWO finally had an executive director, who could structurally make a decision to be part of a proposal without having to get separate approval from every group in the large coalition. We got some serious consideration from WDN for that proposal, but in the end the money went to a group that trains people to write and place op-eds for newspapers. Nevertheless, the fact that a substantial amount of money had been offered for a project related to women and media did raise the heads of the feminist leaders a bit to note this issue. Eventually, I believe media will reach the top level of priorities for the US women's movement. Mal would be pleased. In 2005, she arranged for IAWRT delegates to have a sit-down luncheon with NCWO member organization representatives, to discuss the value of media for women's organizations.
- Frieda Werden
Mal was also co-chair of the committee that organized the 20-year anniversary celebration of that Houston conference. The celebration took place in Washington DC in 1997. Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan were both still alive and they spoke and they physically passed the actual torch from the original conference to the younger generation. Mal was very wonderful at organizing events that had just enough pomp and ceremony and also time to talk. Here's a writeup about the 1997 conference, still to be found online at http://www2.edc.org/WomensEquity/edequity97/0302.html - it quotes Mal and credits her:
>NWC BRIEFING
>Volume I Number 1
>17 August 1997
>
>NWCC CELEBRATES 20th ANNIVERSARY OF HOUSTON
>
>The National Women's Conference Committee is planning a
>national conference to celebrate the historic 1977 Spirit of
>Houston Conference on Women. The Houston Conference attracted
>20,000 delegates and observers, the largest gathering of women
>ever held in the United States, hosted by three former First
>Ladies, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter.
>The 20th Anniversary of that event will be held at The
>Georgetown University Conference Center in Washington D.C.
>November 20-23, 1997.
>
>Participants from throughout the United States will come
>together to assess the progress made toward implementing the
>National Plan of Action, the document of the Houston Conference.
>It will provide an opportunity to recognize the veterans of the
>women's movement and celebrate the successful efforts that serve
>to improve the lives of women and their families. The dialogue
>of the conference will produce a substantive report that will
>document the work of non-government organizations from Houston
>to Beijing and beyond.
>
>The President's Interagency Council on Women is in the process
>of producing a National Action Agenda that will guide the
>United States in follow-up and implementation of the Platform
>for Action, focusing on 12 general issues as described in the
>official document of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women
>held in Beijing in September, 1995. The National Action Agenda
>is a compilation of recommendations expressed by thousands of
>women nationwide during a White House satellite conference
>hosted by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton one year after the
>Beijing conference. The report will be presented at the 20th
>Anniversary Conference for the first time in an open forum.
>
>Conference Committee Chair Mal Johnson says, "We view the
>20th Anniversary Celebration of the Houston Conference as an
>opportunity for the women of America to assess issues that
>require additional attention to further improve the status
>of women."
>
>Members of the National Women's Conference Committee,
>non-government organizations, students and federally-employed
>women are expected to participate in the Conference.
>
>For further information and registration, contact:
>
>Mal Johnson, Conference Co-Chair
>2020 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Suite 267
>Washington, DC 20006
>Phone/Fax: 703.922.4468
>Email: natwom@usa.net
>
>OR visit our Web site at http://www.natwom.org
>
-----------------
Mal was really pleased to have been invited to this conference in Little Rock in October 2006, to share the podium with Bella Abzug's daughter Liz, among others. It was to plan the 30th anniversary of the 1977 Houston Women's Conference. I know Mal was very concerned about whether health would permit her to attend this Arkansas meeting for the 30th anniversary, and I can't remember if she attended or not. Perhaps a reader will post a comment about this.
http://www.nwhp.org/news/conference.php
-----------------
Note to researchers: If you start searching for "National Women's Conference Committee" as a term, you will find truly amazing activities that they have been involved in at not only national but also state levels, working to implement the National Plan of Action. A real must for any research on the impact of Mal Johnson, among others.
--------------
I first got to know Mal when I attended a meeting in St. Louis of the National Women's Conference Committee board, in I think the spring of 1992. I was looking for support for a radio project that I wanted to do. Mal and Sarah Harder liked the idea, and they put me in touch with Martha Burk as well. I think Sarah Harder, a very close friend of Mal's, was then President of what at that time was the Council of Presidents of Women's Organizations, but later evolved into the National Council of Women's Organizations. Martha Burk later became president of this group. Mal helped me design the radio project, and she worked for it, too. It wasn't possible to get any direct endorsement or support from the Council of Presidents, because it was just a coalition and not an organization in itself, but with the help of Sandy Suffian in Kansas City, we raised about $4,000 for the project from NCWO member groups, and the groups provided participants for the programs (it was a two-part series, but all recorded in one day). The project was a multi-city broadcast, with one studio a public radio studio in New York (where Marlene Sanders was the host), and one studio on Capitol Hill in Washington that was owned by the Democratic Party. We used an ISDN line that NPR owned to link those two cities, and then used the Public Radio Satellite Service to have the signal brought back live to the studio where I was monitoring and recording it, in Kansas City. I did a quick edit and released it on the Public Radio Satellite Service, as "National Women's Agenda 1992: What Women Want and How They Plan to Win It." Mal was the producer in the Washington studio.
Mal Johnson loved satellite links, and was very proud to have been involved in setting up an IntelSat satellite connection between the US and the UN's third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1995. (Later, she and I together toured the Worldspace satellite radio facility and also the XM satellite radio facility in Washington. And in 2005 we took the delegates from the International Association of Women in Radio & TV [IAWRT] conference on a tour of XM.)
The National Women's Agenda, referred to in the program's title, was (probably still is) an agenda agreed to annually among the various US women's organizations working in coalition - identifying, from the numerous goals in the National Women's Plan of Action, a few goals to be highlighted and worked on in the year ahead. I think the only gift Mal ever gave me (aside from her friendship and wisdom and conversation and sometimes a place to stay) was a copy of the National Women's Plan of Action, published by the US government shortly after the 1977 National Women's Conference. This was a very precious and rare treasure. Jimmy Carter, who was President in '77, was appalled by the very progressive and far-reaching conclusions in the plan, and so only a few copies were published and then the book largely disappeared. If you find a copy, and maybe in Mal's effects there will be several, don't throw it away! There was a partial version republished later, I think by WEDO (Bella Abzug's last NGO), to mark an anniversary of the conference. The Carter administration (much less the Reagan one and subsequent) refused to pony up any money for implementation of the National Women's Plan of Action, even though the Congress - thanks to Bella Abzug - had put up several million dollars to have the formal structure implemented: delegates elected at state conferences who then met in Houston and voted on the planks of the National Women's Plan of Action. It was the only formal mechanism ever put in place to determine the will of American women. Anyway, the National Women's Conference Committee went ahead and worked on implementation of the Plan every way they could given that there wasn't any money. In the end, they decided that the most cost effective way to work was at the state level. In 1992, there were committees in about 20 US states.
I'm writing this off the top of my memory - a real history needs to be written. Again, researchers, you have your work cut out for you! Mal was on the NWCC board, and as I recall in 1992 she was representing Federally Employed Women. Even though she wasn't federally employed herself, she had worked closely with women in government as she covered the federal government for Cox.
(Funny, I keep thinking that Mal will read this and that I'll call her up and she'll tell me what parts I got wrong!)
One of Mal's greatest frustrations was the inability to launch a media caucus of the National Council of Women's Organizations. She was always on the verge of doing it, but so far it never flew; she said she couldn't get it prioritized by the Council - from what I gather, they paid lip service, but they didn't put energy into mobilizing it. Mal would never usurp the President of any organization she worked with - she had a strong sense of appropriate protocol, which is probably one reason she was such a popular board member. That, and the fact that she worked like the dickens. She and I wrote a grant proposal a couple of years ago in response to a one-time Request for Proposals from the Women Donors' Network. If our plan had been funded, it would have provided $250,000 a year to put media at the top of the National Women's Agenda for four years, funding media events at the national level and local levels for the member organizations to work with the democratic media movement. What made it possible to even write NCWO into such a proposal was the fact that NCWO finally had an executive director, who could structurally make a decision to be part of a proposal without having to get separate approval from every group in the large coalition. We got some serious consideration from WDN for that proposal, but in the end the money went to a group that trains people to write and place op-eds for newspapers. Nevertheless, the fact that a substantial amount of money had been offered for a project related to women and media did raise the heads of the feminist leaders a bit to note this issue. Eventually, I believe media will reach the top level of priorities for the US women's movement. Mal would be pleased. In 2005, she arranged for IAWRT delegates to have a sit-down luncheon with NCWO member organization representatives, to discuss the value of media for women's organizations.
- Frieda Werden
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