So, I was left with this: Maybe men don't know how to write soaring women's speeches. Maybe they have no idea what they would say. And maybe women don't either.
Why has a work by the African-American artist Fred Wilson -- an installation piece that riffs on the topic by assembling authentic slave shackles, slave chains and Revolutionary-era icons -- been such a sore point with critics? We must have struck a raw nerve.
When taunted while speaking in favor of women's rights by some white men who asked if she was really a woman, Sojourner bared her breasts and famously retorted, "Ain't I a woman?"
We all have excuses for why we haven't accomplished this or that. This is the case with many aspects of the most important revolution on the planet: the end of gender domination.
I visited the Sojourner Truth Academy for ninth-graders on Friday, June 18. When I asked a student who gave me a tour of the building what the best part of school was for him, he told me: "the teachers... but they're all leaving."
International Women's Day started as a movement for better working conditions and voting rights. Now it's up to today's women to finish the job -- no excuses if we don't.
The progressive movement throughout the last century has enlisted political leaders, economists, educators, and clergy who strive to create a more equitable world, a task we believe is possible.