Three cheers for Maria Shriver and John Podesta for launching "A Woman's Nation," a Center for American Progress project to explore American women's current status and opportunities. Go to www.americanprogress.org for more information.

But how do we get there from here? Here's my (first) take on what it will take. This take focuses on lessons women seeking public office need to bear-in-mind.

"Be careful what you wish for": As Caroline Kennedy's recent experience teaches us, choose carefully lest you get tripped-up by the belief that all public service is equal in steeling one for the rigors of public scrutiny.

"Make no small plans": As the Presidential election made clear, think big, and then move early and quickly, for day-to-day voting, fundraising and media exposure tar all and tar quickly.

"All politics is local": Louisiana U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu's recent re-election, in her ever-so-conservative state, suggests that creating an organizing plan--and compelling messages--for every single precinct-- whether that precinct is defined by geography, demography, issue-interests, or any other measure that induces a crowd of potential voters to gather, can put one over-the-top in what otherwise looks like a very difficult situation.

"We don't want nobody nobody sent": Minnesota's senior(and still only) U.S. Senator, Amy Klobuchar, spent years building her public policy and electoral experience. Now, by almost any measure, beginning with one created by the New York Times, Senator Klobuchar is on the short list of women who might become President one day.

For the numbers, go to:

Celinda Lake's recent article in Women's E-News,
www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3938, and to

Rutger's Center for American Women and Poltics: www.cawp.org.

Rebecca Sive

Labels: Amy Klobuchar, Center for American Progress, Center for American Women and Politics, John Podesta, Maria Shriver, Mary Landrieu, New York Times

Welcome to "SiveSiftings: Rebecca Sive Talks Back."

SiveSiftings will highlight significant organizing opportunities and policy changes, big ideas, innovative strategies, and tactics and connections that can advance equality and social justice.

SiveSiftings will cover the views of opinion leaders, the actions of technology inventors and public officials, and the grass-roots activities of community organizers and neighborhood leaders.

SiveSiftings will come in the form of musings, strongly-worded opinions, interviews with thought leaders and public figures, to-do lists, manifestos and action proposals.

This is the second edition of SiveSiftings. I first wrote SiveSiftings for my high school newspaper. At that time, I was motivated to share my thoughts about the matter of race, just as I will in this second edition.

Several years before I started writing that high-school column, I had started taking the New York subway. Diversity and differences of all kinds were all around me. I found that I was endlessly curious about the communities my fellow and sister subway-riders came from, were going-to, the kinds of lives they lived, the opportunities they had, and, most of all, about what the other girls on the subway thought lay ahead for them.

The news of that subway-riding and revolutionary era--news from Mississippi and Alabama, Newark, Detroit and Chicago--put my subway-riding observations in a larger context. I realized there were sky-high--and subway-tunnel deep--impediments to equality for too many in the crowds of subway-riders around me. And so I moved to Chicago and started a lifetime's work of community organizing and social justice advocacy.

Today, at another time of great American revolution, I write SiveSiftings again because, once again, faint hearts and meek actions won't suffice. Once again, we must look, listen, learn, and then act courageously and forcefully.

I write from Chicago, where I've been inspired by Dr. King, Saul Alinsky, Jane Addams and many others; where there is still so much to learn, and still so much to do, even though we have inspired our gifted new President.

I hope you’ll take a look at my Blogroll and Resources list, subscribe to SiveSiftings, and e-mail me about topics I should discuss and people I should interview. And do tell me what's on your social-change to-do list. I'm confident we can figure this out together.

Rebecca Sive

Labels: Alabama, Barack Obama, Chicago, civil rights, community organizing, Detroit, Dr. King, Jane Addams, Mississippi, New York, Newark, Saul Alinsky, social justice, women's rights