WINGS

January 11, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs

What Is Fascism? (Then and Now)

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (an Irish republican socialist, political activist, and feminist) gave this passionate speech in Dublin in 2017, upon the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica in 1937 in the Basque region of Spain. She speaks of fascism as de-humanization, Muslims as the new scapegoats, the political origins and philosophies of republicanism vs nationalism, and populist fascist Donald Trump. 

January 4, 2025 National, News & Public Affairs

Climate Change Kenya

In this interview with Diana Wanyonyi, Agnes Leina describes both how water shortages forced a change in the lives of herding peoples in Kenya and how her organization honors indigenous knowledge and traditions. Agnes Leina is the Executive Director and founder of Illaramatak Community Concerns and a pastoralist from Baragoi, Samburu County, in Northern Kenya. She worked on getting indigenous rights and gender in the UN Climate agreement. 

December 28, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

Mothering as Gift

Today's show provides a talk given by Genevieve Vaughan at the 2016 conference of the Mothering Institute for Research and Community Involvement in Toronto. Vaughan demonstrates that the act of mothering is unilateral gift-giving, and that an infant's experience of being mothered (whether by biological mother or other) builds both the physical brain and the template of what it is to be human. She further asserts that the entire exchange economy is parasitic on a more fundamental gift economy that continues unacknowledged in most societies today. This program's audio includes an excerpt from a video by Dr. Allan Schore, a clinical faculty member of the Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

December 21, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

Solstice Rituals

Winter Solstice (December 21 in the Northern Hemisphere) is a physical event and it is also an occasion for ritual and contemplation. In this program, Frieda Werden asks questions of two experienced practitioners of an earth-based, women-centred religion about what they do and how they came to their vocations. They also make suggestions for privately engaging with the darkest night. Our guests are Letecia Layson and Holin (Blackmoon) Kennen, both whom are high priestesses of Dianic Wicca in the Z. Budapest Line. 

December 7, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

Play Like a Girl (or not)

Think computer games are just a boy's world? Think again. Brenda Laurel deeply transformed the gaming and computer worlds from their early days - and she got her start in Theatre. She advocates for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, designed some games to appeal to girls' strengths, and pioneered virtual reality. Her Ph.D. dissertation, published in 1986, was titled Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System, and it formed the basis of her 1993 book "Computers as Theater". Brenda told her life story to Suki Wessling, host of the podcast The Babblery, and Suki shared part of that longer interview with WINGS. 

November 30, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

FIRE at Cairo

According to the United Nations Population Fund website: In 1994 the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, transformed global thinking on population and development issues and defined a bold agenda, placing peoples dignity and rights at the heart of sustainable development. Their page does not mention that this shift was birthed through strategic coordinated actions of the global women's movement.

In 1995, Maria Suarez, founding producer of Costa-Rica-based daily shortwave program Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE/Radio Feminista Internacional), and author of the book "Women's Voices", told WINGS the exciting story of feminist media's central role in this organizing effort. Updated in advance of the 30th anniversary of the women and media section of the Beijing Platform for Action, Section J, adopted at the UN's 4th World Conference on Women.

November 23, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

Witch Survival (from prehistory to today)

This is the finale of Mindy Ran's 2-part 2024 interview with feminist historian and archivist Max Dashu, creator of "The Suppressed Histories Archives" and the 16-volume series "The Secret History of the Witches." Part 1 surveyed the long history of persecution of women in Europe for alleged witchcraft, in a power grab by patriarchal elites. In Part 2, Dashu first looks back at the linguistic and folk culture evidence of early earth-based goddess practices that worked with the cycles of nature. She then contrasts modern examples of witch images in popular culture vs. revived and re-created earth-based rituals today. Honouring relations with nature is essential to survival!

November 16, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

In Memoriam, Dorothy Allison (Author, Lesbian, Working-class Escapee)

American author, activist, lesbian, teacher, anthropologist, and working-class escapee, Dorothy Allison, died November 6th, 2024. She was 75 years old. In her honor, Arlene Zaucha shared the radio program she produced featuring Allison's 2013 talk to the newly-formed Working Class Student Union, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It originally aired in the program series Her Turn, on local community radio station WORT-FM. Among Dorothy Allison's published writings are a book of poetry titled "Women Who Hate Me", a book of short stories titled "Trash", and the semi-fictional novel "Bastard Out of Carolina", which became a best-seller and was made into a film directed by Anjelica Huston. Allison talked of her experience of the class divide in America, and the effect it had on her own life and university experiences.

November 9, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

US Violence Against Women Act

On September 12, 2024, the Biden-Harris administration celebrated 30 years since the passage of the US Violence Against Women Act, with an announcement of new funds and new areas of coverage. Although passed by Congress in 1994, the VAWA bill was first introduced in 1990. From the WINGS archive 1991, here is then-81-year-old Washington reporter Sarah McClendon, interviewing then-49-year-old Senator Joe Biden, about the bill he drafted and introduced in the Senate, and would finally successfully shepherd through. He explains his first realization that the problem existed, and many of the angles to address it written into that bill. A similar version was introduced in the House by Barbara Boxer of California. The VAWA finally passed in both houses in 1994 and has been renewed - although with stops and starts and amendments - ever since. McClendon opined that Biden's work on this bill would make up for his performance as chair of the Judiciary Committee, when Anita Hill's testimony was dismissed and Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the US Supreme Court. 

November 2, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs

History of Witches (a recurring persecution)

Max Dashu has spent over 50 years collecting and researching oral traditions, folklore, written records and artifacts to discover what's there about women. She created The Suppressed Histories Archives to communicate her findings; they include a 16-volume series on The Secret History of The Witches. In today's episode, she explains some of the long history of sexist witch persecutions and murders, who and what was behind them, and how such practices recur.