July 27 - Register Now

Women: Organized to Win's Inaugural Women's Summit Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California is the latest supporter to sign on with Women: Organized to Win California PAC and Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia to present the inaugural Women’s Summit later this month. The event is aimed at providing resources and information to progressive women who are considering running for the California State Legislature beginning in 2014.  “We are so pleased to have prominent organizations support our efforts,” said Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, who is co-presenting the Summit. “When women run for and are elected to public office, women’s issues receive the attention they deserve. This Women’s Summit should be a high priority for anyone concerned with women’s issues.” Additional Summit supporters include HOPE Political Action Committee (www.hopepac.org), the state’s only political network that raises campaign contributions specifically to assist Latinas running for public office. A series of talks and panel discussions focused on the special needs of women candidates is being held during the daylong Summit that is taking place on the campus of Cerritos College July 27. There will be sessions tailored to women who are running for office and another track focused on women still in the exploration stage. The California State Legislature is comprised of less than 30 percent women, even though the state’s population is majority female. In fact, the number of women in the state legislature is on the decline. There are just 21 women in the state assembly today, compared to 25 in 2003. For more information and to register for the Women’s Summit, visit the Women: Organized to Win website at www.womenorganizedtowin.com or call 323.920.5804. The mission of Women: Organized to Win (www.womenorganizedtowin.com) is to elect progressive women to the California State Legislature. We work in partnership with other organizations that share similar goals, focusing our efforts on target districts where we can help women candidates with the tools to win and mentoring to guide them on the path to victory.

Women to L.A. City Hall: Remember us?

Deplorably, as of today, there is not a single elected woman in Los Angeles city government.

By Lindsay Bubar and Sandra Fluke
4:00 PM PDT, July 14, 2013 | LA TIMES

At the dawn of this nation, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband urging that the Continental Congress "remember the ladies" as the men began to govern. Since there were no female elected leaders at the time, women had little choice but to rely on men to make their voices heard.

In 1953, Rosalind "Roz" Wyman became only the second woman elected to serve on the L.A. City Council. In 1915, Estelle Lawton Lindsey became the first. (Los Angeles Times / June 9, 1999)

In Los Angeles, it wasn't until 139 years after Adams' letter that the first woman was elected to the City Council, but since that time many strong, independent women have served on that body.
Now, women must once again ask the city's leaders to "remember the ladies" because, deplorably, there is not a single elected woman in Los Angeles city government.

In 1915, Estelle Lawton Lindsey became the first woman to be elected to the Los Angeles City Council. She brought a unique perspective to the table, focusing on issues the all-male council had never championed. She prioritized public health, greater services for impoverished women and the appointment of female officers to investigate crimes against women. She campaigned for better facilities for female prisoners.

Lindsey was, in short, a perfect example of how the conversation changes when women have a seat at the table, though she often found herself, as she once wrote, "on the firing line for the woman's cause."
It wasn't until 1953 that another woman was elected to serve on the council: Roz Wyman. Many other women have followed in her footsteps since, and in the 1990s, there was a period in which five women served on the City Council at the same time. Women still held only one-third of the seats, but in comparison to today, that seems like a victory. The last non-incumbent woman to be elected to the council was more than a decade ago, in 2001.

On July 23, this will change when voters in Council District 6 will choose between two women in a runoff election to fill the seat vacated by Tony Cardenas when he was elected to Congress. But one woman among 14 men hardly feels like a representative government, and many committees, where policy priorities are set, will still be uniformly male.

Voting decisions shouldn't be made simply on the basis of gender, but as we have seen again and again since Lindsey took office in 1915, the perspectives women bring to the table are unique and critically important to the future of a city made up of 54% women and girls.

Until things change, it will be more crucial than ever that each elected official remember his responsibility to represent 100% of the people in his district. With no women on the council, it is critical that the men ensure that the voices of women and girls are heard.

Council members need to prioritize issues that disproportionately affect women, including pay parity, human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault. It's important that they consider, even when debating seemingly neutral policies, how their actions will affect women, and that they collaborate with the women of their districts. They need to make a conscious effort to build diverse staffs where women are equally represented. Perhaps most important, they need to recruit, mentor and support women to replace them when their terms are up, so that in years to come, women will have more secure seats at the table.

Abigail Adams went on to write, "If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

We aren't calling for open rebellion or lawlessness. However, we do remind the men of the City Council that the women of Los Angeles are watching — and unlike in 1776, now we vote.

Lindsay Bubar is director of political action and former president of the National Women's Political Caucus Los Angeles Westside. Sandra Fluke is a Los Angeles-based attorney working on social justice issues.

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Join us for events with Hilda Solis in June & July

This is an invitation from NWPC LA Westisde to join us for events with Hilda Solis in June & July.

Hilda Solis Event #1 on June 18 in Westwood Please join Cathy & Len Unger * David Abel * Carol & Frank Biondi * Bruce Corwin * Fran Diamond * Bettina Duval * Dennis Hernandez * Lorraine Sheinberg * Honorable Alan Sieroty * Susan Steinhauser Corky & Mike Stoller * Beverly Thomas & Kent Benjamin * Tom Unterman * Dan Weinstein Howard Welinsky and Karren Ganstwig * Peg Yorkin * & Daphna Ziman (committee in formation) for a reception to support The Honorable Hilda L. Solis For LA County Board of Supervisors, District 1 Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. at the home of Cathy and Len Unger 315 Conway Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90024 (Westwood) Co-Chair: $3,000 Benefactor: $1,500 Friend: $1,000 Ticket: $250 RSVP to June 18 via email at rsvp4hilda@gmail.com or call Adrianna or Ernesto at (310) 477-8081  Hilda Solis Event #2 on July 14 in Alhambra The National Women's Political Caucuses of Southern California, LA Metro, Pasadena, LA Westside, San Fernando, & South Bay Invite You To Join Secretary of Department of Labor Hilda Solis For a Sunday Brunch Soiree Sunday, July 14, 2013 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. MA Art Space: 800 South Palm Ave #1, Alhambra CA 91803 RSVP to July 14 via email at nwpclametro@gmail.com or call Desiree Portillo-Rabinov (818)601-1514 OR Monica Aleman (323)251-9642

Message from National President

Dear NWPC Members and Friends,

Many of our conversations for the past few months have been framed with some optimism around wins and advances with issues that we care deeply about. After the 2012 proclamation of another Year of the Woman (and some visible evidence that the title was valid when we saw the highest number of women ever elected to the US Senate, and other wins by women in several areas even beyond elected office) we have seen other signs that seem to say the time continues, that this is time for women to expand our efforts.

As NWPC has worked for more than forty-one years to help recruit, train, and elect qualified women to office, and when we began, fewer than 5% of members of Congress were women. After our 2012 Year of the Woman, as of January 2013, the percentage of women in Congress is 18.3%, according to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. Progress, absolutely. Enough? No way.
We have seen the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed. That Act reinstates the rule in place prior to Ledbetter, frequently called the paycheck accrual rule, so that the 180-day time limit for filing a charge of discrimination with the EEOC begins to run anew after each discriminatory paycheck is received. Thank you for supporting fair pay and nondiscrimination.

This spring we watched the news of President Obama signing reauthorization of Violence Against Women Act (finally reauthorized, again!) and felt pride that our calls and emails and other means of support to encourage this Congressional Act passage made a difference. Thank you for your efforts.
In January we marked the 40th Anniversary celebration of Roe v. Wade, and while we rejoiced that it happened, we all also felt slightly uncomfortable because we know that it is not won forever, and that it can be taken away unless we remain on vigil. Thank you for staying vigilant, and continuing to speak up.

I have been impressed with NWPC state and local caucuses’ news lately in new projects and new efforts, in finding newer approaches to reaching more women who want to support others to run, or who choose to run for office themselves. You are reaching out in more partnerships and collaborations, and I applaud you for that. You are growing in number but also in method for reaching out, but we must redouble our efforts, because the progress we have made is definitely not enough. The goal of 50/50 by 2020 was adopted by one of our biennial conventions a few years ago, and recently at a large coalition of women’s organizations, someone remembered that slogan and said that it was such a good one, and why shouldn’t we all begin thinking of what kind of results we could see by 2020 if we coalesced our numbers and powers and made the earth move. 50/50 by 2020 is ours, but we will gladly ask others to adopt the NWPC goal, and join in the effort. So again, thank you for what you have been doing, and for what you are still doing, and for what you will continue as we move to the future. We can do this. We can get to 50/50 by 2020.


A book by Sheryl Sandberg, an executive with Facebook, wrote a book that is getting lots of visibility and buzz, Lean In. Local groups have been formed for discussion, online Lean In discussions seem to be growing, and the concept seems to be well received in many circles, although in others, Ms. Sandberg is getting plenty of criticism. One of her statements just jumps out to me. “Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry....”

This week a group of elected women here in Central Texas who meets quarterly to discuss issues important to women, and they discussed the Lean In concept. This group, established about five years ago by women Trustees of the Board of the community college that employs me, expands throughout our college service area, designated by the Texas Legislature to cover most of eight counties in this region. The total number of elected women, who are from local school district boards, county and city offices such as mayor or councilmember or commissioner, county clerk and other county elected offices, is 191. The area of External Affairs of the college provides staffing for these meetings, and my staff attends these quarterly meetings. What we heard in the discussion and interaction was very much what I have said earlier here—there are lots of areas where we can declare wins, and celebrate laws that are passed (or bad ones that we have helped prevent from passage), and there is a feeling that this is our time, a time for women to achieve and move into our own. This group also felt that while we are seeing momentum, and do feel some success, we should expand efforts, reach further, and they agreed to meet more often, so that all could provide better support for each other!

This August we will have our biennial Convention, and we need each of you to come, and to be prepared to speak up, to help as we define our next steps, and then to step up as we increase our efforts.

In sisterhood,

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