Here’s a hilarious Mother’s Day fantasy just for you!

Click here: http://www.momsdaycard.com/index2.php

Happy nearly Mother’s Day!!!

- Kristin, Joan, Monifa, Elisa, Ashley, Nanette, Sarah, Julie, Sarah, Anita, Ruth, Claire, Donna, Mary, and Gloria

We are powerfully, substantially, fully “Networked Moms.”

Increased Internet access, coupled with new communication technologies–like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and even emails– allows women to reach dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of other women at one time with a quick press of a button.  It’s an unbelievably fast moving tool that significantly accelerates communication, education, organizing, and impact.

One example of these rapidly growing networks is the fast growth of MomsRising due to networked friends telling friends: We started with just a handful of members in 2006, and we’ve grown to over a million members today.  MomsRising’s highly trafficked blog and social media networks have also grown at a fast pace. We’re delighted to share that MomsRising now has over 700 bloggers, including Congresspeople, Cabinet Secretaries, moms with amazing personal stories, policy experts, and more. There’s an amazing variety of well-written perspectives, resources, and action links in ONE place: The MomsRising blog. 

Networked moms are powerful and we’re everywhere.  And we Networked Moms are creating our own new media online– and are bringing forward topics that have too long been ignored in traditional media outlets.

So in celebration of the growing power of Networked Moms to bring forward critically important topics, for Mother’s Day we’ve gathered together the most popular recent blogs posted on MomsRising right here (Scroll down this page to check it all out).

Click here!

How to Make a Superhero Cape by Lara from HowDoesShe

Food Revolution! A Blog Carnival On School Food and Fighting Childhood Obesity, Diabetes by Monifa Bandele

Mother Takes on Monsanto, Wins Global Prize by Kristin Schafer ***Shared over 1,000 times on Facebook!

The Real View of Free Formula Samples—Open Your Eyes by Melissa Bartick, MD ***Shared over 1,000 times on Facebook!

The Story Behind My Film “Entre Nos” by Paola Mendoza

Coke Turns 125: Why I’m Not Celebrating by Mike Jacobson

130 Death Row Inmates Have Been Found Innocent Since 1973: Troy Davis’ Execution is Set for Tomorrow  by Monifa Bandele ***Shared over 1,000 times on Facebook

Wal-Mart’s Sick Sick Day Policy by Katie Bethell

It’s Not a “Mommy War,” It’s a War on Moms by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner

The Execution of Troy Davis–A Mother’s Story by Martina Davis-Correia

TIME: Ask the RIGHT Questions! by Genevieve Colvin

Making Miss Representation has changed my life in more ways than one. Not only has the documentary transformed the way I consume media but it’s also influenced my parenting decisions when it comes to household media consumption.  If I want to challenge the way the media represents women and girls – and I want all girls growing up believing in their potential  – then I have to be extra vigilant about the media my family consumes. Change starts with me.

While I am not thrilled with television options for two and a half year olds, let alone the thought of my kids being in front of the TV at all, I do appreciate Comcast’s OnDemand service because it allows me to find kids programming (when necessary) without having to wade through all the sexist commercials typical of live TV.

Yet it’s precisely because I use the service that I am especially upset over the kind of advertising Comcast pushes in its OnDemand preview box in the upper right hand corner. While I search for the latest episode of Caillou and Dora the Explorer with both kids in viewing proximity, I’ve been subject to trailers of horror films and sexually explicit material.

I believe Comcast has a responsibility to air content which is appropriate for all genders and age groups here. This isn’t a radical concept – there are already media filters in place on most television networks – and Comcast itself offers parental controls for cable channels. You don’t see extremely violent or hyper-sexual content during cartoons on a children’s network, right?  Well, people of all ages and interests use the OnDemand section, and it should be a safe place to find the shows I want for my young kids.

It takes action on behalf of a few big media companies to transform an entire industry when it comes to representations of gender and sexuality. This is a fantastic opportunity for Comcast to demonstrate leadership and make a difference for parents and children across the country.

Let’s just hope they’re tuned in.

Sign the petition, started by concerned mother Laura Alexander, asking Comcast to change their OnDemand advertising.

Unfortunately, even if your school district has policies to ban junk food advertising to your children, there are new and powerful ways that food and beverage companies can still reach your children with their products.  They do this by using digital marketing to reach your children before school, between classes and even after school by masking their advertising as entertainment and social media.  Fast-food companies are in the forefront of harnessing the power of the Internet to target our children with interactive ads, 24/7.

In today’s age of digital marketing, any laptop, gaming device, or mobile phone is a convenient and effective way in which advertisers can deliver targeted digital food advertising to any child or teen.  Increasingly more and more kids own and always carry around these devices and that means that marketers can always reach them, any time and any place.

Recent Massachussetts Aggression Reduction Center and Pew Research studies show just how deep cell phone penetration is among America’s youth:

• 3rd graders – Almost 20% have cell phones
• 5th graders – 40% have cell phones
• Middle Schoolers –  Almost 91 % have cell phones for texting and the internet
• 77% of teens own their own cell phones and rely on them for talk, text and internet

Digital marketing is very different from television, print and radio advertising because of its ability to engage and draw its consumers into interaction as co-creators.  It is often immersive, interactive, highly individualized, immediate in delivery and influential in nature.  Here are some examples:

• Immersive– Doritos created two interactive online games called Hotel 626 and Asylum 626to create a 360-degree immersive advertising environment.  Using social media, mobile phones, and state of the art multimedia production, these websites presented themselves as entertaining horror games and not advertising for Doritos snacks. Millions of bags of the fattening snack flew off the shelves as a result of this campaign.Last year, we at the Center for Digital Democracy filed a complaint at the Federal Trade Commission about the “unfair and deceptive” practices used by Doritos.
• Interactive – By drawing children and teens into becoming co-creators of ads in the “Crash the Superbowl” contest, Doritos disguises advertising for its product by appealing to youth interest in contests.
• Individualized – Companies like Coca-Cola, for its MyCokeRewards, use so-called “behavioral targeting”—stealthily capturing information on what users do and where they go online to create online behavioral profiles that fuel personalized advertising.
• Interconnected – Facebook’s Sponsored Stories are examples how marketers insert themselves into peer conversations via social media networks to create personalized advertisements that carry the weight of a peer recommendation.  Many Facebook apps that are used and shared with friends for social connection and entertainment also collect vast amounts of data from their users for personalized and targeted advertising.
• Immediate – McDonald’s McFlurry mobile marketing campaign in California invited young mobile users to text-message a phone number in order to receive instant e-coupons for a free dessert.  These type of ads use location based technology to target individual mobile devices with real time and location specific marketing.
• Influential– Food marketers such as Pepsi, McDonald’s and General Mills use brain research—so-called neuromarketing– designed to trigger subconscious and emotional arousal for their products.  Neuromarketing helps instill the messages marketers want us to hear, deep inside our brains.

These little known methods of advertising are deceptive and unfair as it blurs the lines between content and advertising, making it difficult for children and teens to maintain the awareness that they are consuming advertising and not merely entertainment.  All of this is taking place in the context of our growing youth obesity crisis where 12.5 million (17%) of our children between ages 2-19 are overweight or obese.

Digital marketing of junk food to our children threatens to unleash an even greater obesity crisis.  From Facebook to mobile phones, food advertisers are playing a growing role in shaping how our new media serves our kids.  We hope you will join us in telling the digital junk food marketers not to target America’s youth.

To learn more about these practices and see case studies visit www.digitalads.org.

You need to fill up the minivan, the truck, the car, the bus, walk, run, and just go to see the movie Bully.

You need to take your kids and your grand-kids and your nieces and nephews. You need to take the church groups and the Little League team and the chess club and the Gay-Straight Alliance club and the scout troop. You need to go if you’re a teacher or a parent or a coach or bus driver.

You need to go. It’s that important. Really. That important.

The movie will be one of the most wrenching, unsettling, powerful, important films you may ever see. The language in the movie is strong language. It is the language of hate. The situations are disturbing and not a manufactured creature of Hollywood.

The video is real made by an almost invisible photographer who simply follows the children and the adults in their lives with a small camera, capturing what is too often hidden.

Bully is game changing in the way we think about and act on childhood bullying. What changes is the belief that bullying is simply a case of Kids Will Be Kids. Children are dying, and this movie tells the truth we don’t want to hear, but must hear.

As a companion to the film, I suggest you also visit NEA.org/bullyfree. Because the movie will starkly show the truth of bullying; it makes us aware, but we don’t want to stop there. Awareness must lead to action.

Research shows that 93% of schools now have policies against bullying. Fine. Good.

But when those school employees were asked if they’ve ever received training on how to intervene in a bullying situation, only half say that they have ever received training on how to deal with bullying.

Which means most of us would turn to what our mothers told us when we experienced teasing or bullying when small. My mom told me as I told my sons, “Just ignore them and they’ll go away.”

This is a big, fat Don’t.

When a child tells an adult about being bullied and hears “Just ignore them, and they’ll go away,” the message that is delivered is, “I’m just going to ignore you, and you’ll go away.”

The child is being told, “I don’t intend to help you; this isn’t serious; no biggy.”

And when a child can’t take it anymore and doesn’t think that any adult cares, that’s when a desperate child can resort to an act of desperation. And even those children who don’t end up in a news story end up being tortured by the memory of being bullied for the rest of their lives. No good comes from ignoring a bullied child.

So what are the Do’s?

Do step in. It’s an adult’s place to intervene. Bullying is not a childish game.

Do separate them. Don’t question children in front of each other. The bully can be dangerous. Bystanders may be intimidated. Question children privately and separately and you’re more likely to get a more complete picture of what’s happening.

Do be calm and respectful and model for the children the gravity of bullying and that you intend to get to the bottom of it and you intend to stop it.

Do tell the bullied child, “I’m glad you told me about this. This is very serious. I am going to make sure no one hurts you. No one deserves to be bullied.”

The truth is, it is very hard to immediately stop a bully from bullying again. But the bigger truth of this final Do is that the bullied child knows immediately that he or she is not alone. You cannot imagine how powerful this is. The bullied child hears, “Someone is going to help me. Someone says I don’t deserve to be bullied. I am not all by myself.”

A bully steals a piece of the victim’s soul. If someone stole that child’s lunch money, there would be a dozen adults making sure the thief was caught and punished and the child was protected. How much more valuable is a child’s soul? How much greater a loss is that child’s self-respect, and sense of safety? Shouldn’t a dozen adults be running to protect those treasures?

So go to the movies. Take your friends and families and watch and become more aware than you might want to be about the children who need just one, caring adult in their lives. But if you are the type of person to see such great need and say to yourself, “Wow. Golly, that’s interesting. Gee, thanks for letting me know.” Then stay home.

If you’re the type of person who says, “I have to do something about this,” then come. Fill up your hearts with these children. And be moved to more than tears. Be moved to act to save them.

I am taking the Causes.com pledge to unplug for the National Day of Unplugging for my 3-year-old. I already see how much my use of technology has impacted him. He walks around the house saying, “Where’s my iPhone? I have a call in a minute.” And he has two (fake) phones he carries around in his pockets in case an “important call” comes in. I know all too well whom he is modeling.

While I have a full-time job that very much involves technology and I cannot take the six-month digital detox that I envy Professor Jennifer Rauch for, I certainly can unplug for 24 hours on the National Day of Unplugging (NDU) on March 23-24, 2012, and work to make it a weekly ritual.

I’ve already been practicing. Yes, sometimes it’s a pain not to have my phone on me (it took me a little longer during a recent unplugged weekend to find the Lego store with my son without Siri giving me directions), but it has yet to become an emergency situation. Remember the days when the hostess at a restaurant would come to tell you at your table that you had a phone call from home? Perhaps not as convenient as an immediate connection but how many times have you really had the babysitter call you while you were out on a date with a true emergency. It’s never happened to me in my nine years as a parent. My last text from our babysitter was that my son was asking if he could watch a show. The answer was “no” before I left home and it was still “no” then. I doubt she would have called the restaurant to ask about that.

Most importantly, what my kids and my husband get from me when I’m unplugged is well worth any inconvenience that comes along with it.

Shutting off technology allows people the time to pause and realize what they are missing when they are Facebooking, Tweeting, texting and emailing. Although we are creating connections online, we are missing out on tuning in to our families, friends and the world around us.

The NDU’s goal of unplugging to encourage a healthy and balanced lifestyle is rooted in the ancient notion of a day of rest. Although the NDU was inspired by a group of young Jews looking for a way to reinvent the Jewish Sabbath, it is intended for all people regardless of background — we believe that everyone needs a day of rest!
The non-profit create-tank, Reboot, developed the annual tech detox to encourage young, hyper-connected, and frequently frantic people to take a respite from all things digital.

We hope you’ll consider signing off from technology for the National Day of Unplugging, sunset March 23 to sunset March 24, 2012. You can sign up for the movement at causes.com/unplug and receive ideas for what to do when you are unplugged at theundolist.com.

About Reboot
: Every generation must grapple with the questions of identity, community and meaning on its own terms. Reboot exists to facilitate that process for this and future generations – providing the tools and methodologies to help ‘reboot’ inherited tradition and make it vital, resonant and meaningful in modern life. Founded in 2002, Reboot engages and inspires young, Jewishly-unconnected cultural creatives, innovators and thought-leaders who, through their candid and introspective conversations and creativity, generate projects that impact both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. Reboot has been responsible for producing some of the most influential and innovative Jewish books, films, music, Web sites and large-scale public events of the past five years. These projects include the National Day of Unplugging, Sukkah City, 10Q, Sabbath Manifesto, Beyond Bubbie, the DAWN Festival and the Idelsohn Society of Musical Preservation. Find out more at: www.rebooters.net

One such story is of hip-hop artist Sister Fa and her efforts to stop the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in her home country of Senegal. From her early days as an unpolished music phenom, through a career-reinvention in Berlin, Sister Fa has continually smashed barriers in the male-dominated hip-hop world. But as this stirring documentary reveals, her strength of character was forged in a journey of hardship and transformation. Now, with the support of her husband and child, Sister Fa speaks out about her own experience as a survivor of FGC, and travels with her band to rural Senegal, where she launches a music-packed education campaign that culminates in an emotional visit to her home village. Sister Fa will be joining Link live on Sunday March 4 at 12p PT to take questions and discuss her story and important work.

These stories are so important, and sharing them is what fosters action and change. So tune in to Link TV (DISH 9410/DIRECTV 375) from March 1-8 to honor women around the globe. You’ll see issues and perspectives uncovered and unseen on any other media outlets.  Watch as Iranian women activists risk their safety to confront political candidates, and Western women trade their comfortable lives for experiences as Tribal Wives. Find out what it takes To Educate a Girl in Nepal and Uganda, and follow Nigerian doctors, midwives and families to the frontlines of maternal care.  And of course – tune in to the hit Danish drama Borgen, the TV show currently on American airwaves that showcases a female head of state.

For more information on these programs and ways to get involved in Link’s efforts to lift women globally, please visit www.linktv.org/women

With all that’s at stake in each state, you may be startled to learn that most legislatures remain boys’ clubs, with women so severely underrepresented that the political process suffers.  (No need to single anyone out, but let’s just say that at 9%, South Carolina is a great place to be when you can’t wait long for the ladies’ room!)

Guest blogger Laurie Kretchmar, media director for The 2012 Project, delivers an impassioned plea for women to seize the opportunities open in this year’s election below.  Read the original post via Care2 here, and heed her call to consider running for state office.  There’s still time to jump into a race…and there’s clearly still a deep need for informed, engaged, experienced women (why not you?) to shape the policies that affect your family every day.

On video

I’m a sucker for those movies. But I have a love-hate relationship with them because inevitably, in order to lionize the hero, they have to make all the other teachers in the school less than heroes. They have to make the principal a bully. Movies need a good guy to cheer for and bad guys to boo over. Así es la vida. That’s the way it goes.

Chester Upland, a poor and predominantly minority district, is a long way from Hollywood, but it does have a star in Sara Ferguson.

She’s a teacher of literacy and Math. She’s a good teacher who loves her students passionately. But that’s not why she was interviewed on the Ellen Show and the Ed Show. That’s not why President Obama invited her to sit in the First Lady’s box to hear the State of the Union address.

She came to the President’s attention because she has been the face of the sad saga that has become Chester Upland School District.

She’s passionate about her students, yes. But she’s the first one to tell you that she’s only a representative of her colleagues who all love their students passionately.

She’s proud to be one of them. She thanks her union for supporting them in their struggle during the funding crisis in her district that resulted in 204 teachers and 64 education support professionals being told a few months ago that due to budget cuts by Governor Tom Corbett there just wasn’t enough money to cover their paychecks. Sorry.

The first story of Chester Upland is about those 204 teachers and 64 education support professionals and their union getting together to discuss a crisis that meant closing the doors of their schools located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. This was not a layoff.

This was the result of the meat cleaver the Governor took to state school funding support without knowing (at best) or not caring (at worst) what that state funding support meant to the poorest school districts which simply did not have the property tax base to make up the difference.

The way the axe came down on Chester Upland’s students would have meant locking the doors and wishing the children luck in finding a new school. Except the heroes of Chester Upland, those teachers and support professionals and their union decided, without permission from anyone, not to let that happen.

“We are adults; we will make a way,” Sara Ferguson told her local paper this month. “The students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job.”

They decided to keep working even though the district told them they could not guarantee them they would ever be paid. The heroes of Chester Upland understood the risk. Their union understood the risk. But the heroes of Chester Upland were not about to give up on their students or the community that was counting on them.

They also weren’t going to sit idly by and hope that someone rescued them. They got to work through their union to get the word out as to what the Governor’s cuts had done to poor children.

They talked to the press. They got the attention of some big national programs like the Ellen Show and the Ed Show. Sara spoke with calm, but with all her heart why she could not abandon her students and why she and her colleagues were going to stay and fight for them.
Her union did a full-court press on state politicians. They called on the public to put pressure on those politicians to find a solution. And finally relief – albeit temporary relief – came in the form of emergency aid that should carry the district through (hopefully) the rest of the year.

Politicians were shamed into keeping the doors open in Chester Upland by brave heroes who stood by each other to show a united front to their students and send them the essential message: You are worth fighting for. The parents stood with them. The public stood with them. Teachers and support professionals all over the country stood with them. But the rest of the story is left to tell.

The rest of the story is about a school funding system could allow such a thing to happen in the first place. What message does it send to poor children that their schools are funded so poorly that their teachers have to offer to work without pay while rich districts would never face such a dilemma?

Chester Upland and its brave employees dodged a bullet that was aimed directly at them and their students. But why did they have to?

Adequate and equitable school funding is a civil rights issue. Neither Chester Upland nor any school district in the country should ever again be the victim of the gamesmanship of a governor, mayor or any politician. We will be fighting this fight again and again until we address the funding systems in our states that allow Haves and Have-Nots within our public schools.

Chester Upland is blessed with many lion-hearted professionals who stood ready to sacrifice for their students. But the fight must not stop there. Unions and parents and civil rights groups and people who care about justice for all students have to roar like lions until the politicians get it. Every child deserves a great public school and it takes dollars to make that happen. The cold, hard fact is that it will take cold, hard cash to get to a happy ending for every school and a happy beginning for every student.

A truly clueless if well-intentioned column by Gene Marks titled “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” in Forbes magazine is getting righteously ripped from journalists all around the web. They’re correctly pointing out how bereft Marks’ column is of history, research, practical awareness, racial sensitivity, or the sheer realities of hunger or even homelessness that low-income children face. Marks seems to suggest that kids from impoverished backgrounds – all too many of whom are African American – can simply access computers and lift themselves up by their digital bootstraps to use free websites and enter elite prep schools or colleges. Maybe a handful of motivated kids will manage a heroic feat like that despite all the odds, but is this going to work for the majority of poor kids?

And here’s exactly what’s wrong with Marks’ perspective and why it’s indicative of a 1% mentality among billionaire education philanthropists (Silicon Valley included) that results in failure to truly invest in public schools, despite those same businesses relying on a highly skilled and educated workforce: solutions lie in privatization — individuals hands on individual (digital) bootstraps.

But also privatization of another kind: web-assisted businesses that hollow out the public school system and see it as nothing but a lucrative market. Marks’ list of ed-tech resources is lengthy and a roll call of ideas, good and bad, to bring education into the computer age. But as recent article after article has pointed out, online education companies hawking virtual schooling are providing low quality schooling to at-risk kids with no accountability, and at the same time siphoning off public money intended for neighborhood schools on the corner. Billionaire philanthropists thwart democratic decision-making about taxpayer priorities by using string-laden foundation donations as a form of education policy, instead of those same businesses or their owners paying taxes to fund public education. For example, in Seattle, titans of Microsoft corporation donated to groups that swatted down a 2010 ballot initiative to tax millionaire incomes that would’ve funded public schools in Washington state.

This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a greed issue. Many of these well-meaning “edupreneurs” are Democrats who are reliably liberal on stopping climate change, or banning genetically modified foods. But when it comes to the nation’s schools and cherishing the fact that every public school serves every child who comes to the door as they are, conveying important ideas about citizenship, diversity, democracy, and a common good to the nation’s children, “edupreneurs” miss the rainforest for the money tree. Our open, publicly-funded public school system, deeply woven into the fabric of our open, freedom- and innovation-loving society, is the gem in the crown of America that people from around the world for decades have tried to replicate. Certainly it’s our bricks-and-mortar universities, and not mediocre for-profit online colleges, that are still the envy of the world. Close the door of equal opportunity to children, especially poor children, and we turn our backs on our legacy as the land of opportunity.

Is the answer to reject technology, to do as 19th century Luddites did and smash laptops, the equivalent of mechanized looms, in order to save schools? Emphatically no, and here’s where I think many miss an important point about Marks’ misguided piece. The internet provides the same frictionless means to disintermediate middle men as it provides opportunities to insert middle men. And today’s education middle men are testing companies, textbook publishers, online learning companies, teacher certification companies, and standardized test prep companies, sometimes all rolled into the same conglomerate — taking a giant, profitable chunk from states and school districts even as money that goes to classrooms where kids are gets cut.

So here’s what I’d like to see: flip this state of affairs. Disintermediate high-tech middlemen selling silicon snake oil. State departments of education could start acting in the public interest and creating FREE and OPEN SOURCE websites where best practices in teaching, outstanding examples of curriculum, test prep materials, tests themselves, teacher certification, syllabi and other resources are made available to teachers and any student who wants to improve herself. With the millions saved from not buying an international conglomerate’s tests, curriculum, online school materials, test prep, or online teacher certification, there’d be plenty of money for small, intimate classrooms, plentiful well-trained and well-paid teachers, and every child who needs wrap-around services would have them. With the money saved from eliminating the middle man, we’d have plenty to invest in after-school enrichment, high-quality daycare, remedial help, special ed shadows, children’s dental or medical care, fully-funded music/art/sports programs, nutritious real vegetables (not pizza-like vegetables), and gifted and talented education.

The longstanding problems that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds face need a broad social and political response, not solutions that are occasional feel-good stories about one or two motivated kids who figure out how to do calculus online. Realizing you can use library computers to access the internet for free isn’t going to fill the stomachs of some 20% of all children –white, African American, Latino, Asian, Native American — under 18 who are struggling this very minute.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, parents who are ineffective or unable to parent – these are all analog problems kids have that need the help of other people, not only computers, to solve. What Gene Marks and other Silicon Valley “edupreneurs” forget is that we live in a complicated three-dimensional world that doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet or a computer screen. Digital bootstraps aren’t enough; to help all the nation’s kids we need lifelines offered face to face to real kids, from a person who cares in their neighborhood schools.

Cynthia Liu is founder of the grassroots education news site K12NewsNetwork.com, which empowers parents, educators, and students to report on important events at their local neighborhood schools and provides tools for maximum civic engagement in support of public education. This piece originally appeared in Technorati.