I know it has taken me too long to make a print for Patsy Mink. But here it is! I did it! I first heard her name when, several years ago, a man passing through the market shouted to me: “Do you have Patsy Mink? You should have Patsy Mink!” I sometimes get trolled like this so I often just ignore men when they do this. But a few days after this I looked her up—and this keeps happening!—I was blown away by how amazing she was! This guy keeps passing by, even at other markets, telling me I’ve got to do Patsy Mink. Whew. I can’t wait to show this to him.

What you endure is who you are. And if you just accept and do nothing, then life goes on. But if you see it as a way for change, life doesn’t have to be this unfair. It can be better. Maybe not for me, I can’t change the past, but I can certainly help somebody else in the future, so they don’t have to go through what I did.

Patsy Matsu Mink (December 6, 1927–September 28, 2002) was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress. She is a third generation descendant of Japanese immigrants to Hawai’i. She represented Hawai’i in the House for 24 years, from 1965–1977 and again from 1990–2002. She is known for her work on legislation advancing women’s rights and education, civil rights policies, and for her opposition to the Vietnam War.

Patsy Mink was way ahead of everyone else in her thinking about the disaster of the Vietnam war, and she took a lot of flak for that. She knew that our government was hiding things from us about the war, and she thought that was wrong. She also fought hard for a social safety net for mothers and children, a losing position during the welfare reform of the 1980s. She knew that these policies would cement wealth inequality into our society. She fought against the “Patriot Act” because she knew that it was wrong for our government to spy on its own citizens, that this power could be too easily abused.

. . . it was more important to be right, and be alone, than to join in with the majority and be incorrect. And sometimes when you did that, you had to be off by yourself for awhile. But as long as you were morally right, eventually people would see that they were wrong, and they would come your way. 

Sometimes her colleagues thought she was too stubborn and abrasive, but how much of their reaction was because of their expectations about how an Asian woman should behave? From any perspective she was without a doubt “fierce and fearless” (the title of the biography of Mink co-authored by Patsy’s daughter, Gwendolyn Mink).

Patsy Mink faced many barriers when she sought her education and pursued her profession. She was a brilliant student, but no medical school would accept her application because she was a woman. She managed to get into Columbia Law School on their foreign student quota, because the admissions committee was ignorant about the citizenship status of people from the territory of Hawai’i. Once she earned her degree, no law firm would hire her, saying that as a mother she would not be able to work the necessary hours. So she started her own law firm and found her calling in politics, both local and national. Patsy Mink ran for many offices and won a few. She never gave up, even after big disappointments.

I came to Congress, joined the Education and Labor Committee, and we began to realize that although we had statutes on the books about equality and opportunity for everyone, that girls and women were being left out, systematically.

Title IX: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”

Patsy Mink and Representative Edith Green co-authored Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX established equal opportunity for women, in graduate school admissions, financial aid, and athletic programs. Patsy remembered the time in graduate school when she was the only woman in the class, only one of a handful of women in the whole school, and she knew that had to change. Women have made huge inroads in education, beyond Mink’s wildest dreams.

I never had in my dreams and expectations the notion that, for instance, medical schools across the country would be 50-50 men and women, that law schools would become 50-50 men and women, and so on down in the professions, and that it would change entirely the notion of careers for women.

Title IX sailed through Congress, but controversy soon erupted. Before Title IX, 98% of college athletic budgets went to men’s teams, but the new law required schools to provide opportunities for female athletes, leaving less money for men. A later amendment to preserve the discriminatory advantage for mens’ sports was defeated. Looking back, it is clear that equal resources for women’s sports has had a huge impact on the success of women athletes and teams. Although, clearly, there is still discrimination in professional sports.

Title IX has also had a huge impact because it protects students and staff from sexual assault and harassment. If a school doesn’t deal properly with these forms of oppression, then the Feds can get involved.

DESIGN NOTE

The tree image: Patsy’s middle name, Matsu, is the Japanese word for a pine tree that grows near the coast and is buffeted by winds, yet stays strong and develops beautifully because of those winds.

The background image is taken from the actual paper document of  the Title IX law in the National Archives, which can be found here: https://catalog.
archives.gov/id/7455551?objectPage=6  The document has the rubber stamps showing the date it was received at the White House (6/12/72) and at the General Services Administration, Office of the Federal Register (6/23/72). This isn’t a typed document, it is printed by letterpress. Every page has a rule border printed in red. The law is, among other things, a physical object.

The image of Patsy Mink is based on a photo used in Time magazine’s 100 Women of the Year issue of 2020 found here: https://time.com/5793641/patsy-takemoto-mink-100-women-of-the-year/   There it was used courtesy of Gwendolyn Mink/Patsy Takemoto Mink papers, Library of Congress.

MORE SOURCES

The Patsy Mink quotes (in italics above) are from a 2008 documentary film called “Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority” directed by Kimberlee Bassford, available on Kanopy through your library. 

View at Medium.com

https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix-education-amendments-1972

60. Fifteen Minutes of Feminism: Reflecting on the Legacy of Title IX Champion, Patsy Mink (with Wendy Mink)

Here is a page with many sources: https://www.patsyminkfoundation.org/more-about-patsy-mink

Here is another design for Nancy Pelosi. (I had made the first one in 2019.)

Nancy Patricia Pelosi, born March 26, 1940, to a political family in Baltimore, was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from January 4, 2007–January 3, 2011, and again from January 3, 2019–January 3, 2023. Representing four-fifths of the city and county of San Francisco, CA, she assumed her office in the House of Representatives on June 2, 1987. Nancy Pelosi is the first woman to hold the rank of Speaker and after she stepped down she was widely called one of the most effective and consequential holders of that office.

This is the second design I have made for Nancy Pelosi and I will include some background on my first design below. Several things have prompted me to make something new for Nancy. For one, people kept asking for a Nancy fridge magnet and my previous design from 2019 was too complicated for such a small object. The biggest thing, however, is the video of her actions during the attack on Congress by the right wing extremists, instigated by the 45th President. Her daughter, Alexandra, filmed her mother reacting calmly to the unprecedented events: calling local governors to get National Guard backup; telling the Vice President not to let anyone know where he is (while ripping open a meat jerkey snack with her teeth while she held her phone); and trying to put things into place so that Congress could reconvene to install the next President … KEEP CALM. Mostly I admire her for standing up face to face to an extreme and dangerous President, with style and grit … HOLD ON. Finally, I was impressed by how she gave up the speakership and blew a kiss to her successor when she gave him her vote on the floor of the House. That just seemed so Nancy … LET GO.

I decided to make the first perSISTERS print for Nancy Pelosi [TAKE POWER] because of the suggestion of a young man I met in one of my Female Power Project booths at a street market in D.C. He had previously worked for Pelosi and admired her. He also told me about the “people don’t give you power, you take it” comment, which I found cited in numerous places. Pelosi is, and has been for a while, the most powerful and effective woman in American politics. Her story, and peoples’ stories about her, are a telling distillation of America’s ideas about female power. It isn’t rocket science; it isn’t subtle at all. Americans hate and distrust powerful women. According to a 2010 paper by Yale researchers cited by Peter Beinart in the April 2018 issue of The Atlantic, when presented with the same description, both men and women reacted negatively to an ambitious, power-seeking leader with a woman’s name, while the same description attached to a man’s name elicited support. 

Beinart goes on to write, “As the management professors Ekaterina Netchaeva, Maryam Kouchaki, and Leah Sheppard noted in a 2015 paper, Americans generally believe ‘that leaders must necessarily possess attributes such as competitiveness, self-confidence, objectiveness, aggressiveness, and ambitiousness.’ But ‘these leader attributes, though welcomed in a male, are inconsistent with prescriptive female stereotypes of warmth and communality.’ In fact, ‘the mere indication that a female leader is successful in her position leads to increased ratings of her selfishness, deceitfulness, and coldness.’”  

I challenge Nancy’s critics on the right and the left to mindfully address their unexamined bias against powerful women.

DESIGN NOTE

This image is based on a 2018 photo by Andrew Harnik showing Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer (then in the minority party in Congress) leaving a meeting with the president at that time. The way she is dressed, in a burnt orange coat, donning sunglasses in the D.C. winter brightness, caused a stir in the social media sphere. She radiates panache. Nancy is a master of this sort of Female Power: the power of the bright colored garment. It makes her stand out in the sea of dull colored power suits that most of her male colleagues wear. If you are going to be the exception to the rule of men holding the power, then do it exceptionally. A garment always means something. I hope as women gain parity in the halls of power we can continue to take up space brightly, as Nancy Pelosi does.

Read more about Pelosi on Wikipedia, and at these links: 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/14/do-you-believe-this-new-video-shows-how-nancy-pelosi-took-charge-in-capitol-riot

From the Times.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-nancy-pelosi-problem/554048/

http://time.com/5388347/nancy-pelosi-democrats-feminism/

“Well, I have a choice here. I can accept the injustice or rewrite the law.”

Amanda Nguyen (born c. 1991) is the founder and CEO of Rise, a civil rights legislation organization. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to petition Congress to make a law, but the process of getting a law passed is difficult. Rise has developed a structure and techniques for helping people to pass laws in the United States. The organization is responsible for the passage of the Federal Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, as well as numerous state laws guaranteeing and rationalizing the rights of survivors of sexual violence. Nguyen and Rise also succeeded in getting the UN to pass a resolution urging countries to take effective measures to help survivors of sexual and gender-based violence to access justice, remedies, and assistance. It is the first time the UN has addressed sexual violence in peacetime.

“We are leaders from #MeToo, #StopAsianHate, Women’s March, and March for Our Lives—the largest grassroots organizing moments in recent US history. We started by fighting for survivors of sexual violence and collectively we’ve passed more than 60 laws. We’ve gathered our experience to teach you how to pass your own law for your community.”  –from risenow.us

Amanda Nguyen has a background in astrophysics and national security. While she was a student at Harvard someone raped her, and then she learned how broken the justice system is for survivors of sexual violence. Across the country there was a wide variation in the way rapes are investigated and adjudicated. Of particular concern to Amanda was that in Massachusetts the evidence collected (the “rape kit”) would be destroyed after 6 months if charges hadn’t been filed, but the statute of limitations didn’t run out for 15 years. Meanwhile, to try a rape case takes about 2 years of traumatic work. Amanda had to choose whether to give up her job offer in Washington D.C. or to stay in Massachusetts and receive justice. She thought this was just wrong, so she took her Washington job and also started Rise—in her spare time!—so that she could fix the system for other rape survivors. We have seen this before in the stories of perSISTERS: Amanda turned pain and outrage into purpose and regard for other people.

Part of Amanda’s success comes from her social—and social media—abilities and her ease in engaging with famous people to spotlight her issues. She is at ease in fashion shows and filmed interviews. She is brilliant, analytical, and articulate. But it is evident that her rape and her creation of Rise has sidetracked her from what she really wants to do with her life, which is to be an astronaut. Changing the world is just a side gig. She’s working on it, though, and you can follow her training on her Instagram feed (@nguyen_amanda). Maybe having a public life will help her achieve her dream. 

About the phrase HACK THE SYSTEM

Hacking has two main senses. One is destructive: a hacker gains unauthorized access to software and manipulates the code to destroy the program or to make a profit on manipulating the program. Another sense is creative: for example, a hack is using some system devised for one purpose in order to make something unrelated work better. In effect it means to make a system work for one’s particular goal. Amanda’s goal is justice for people who don’t usually have a platform to access justice.

What that hack looked like:

“We put together this basic set of rights and aimed to pass it in the United States Congress. And when we first started out, we were a group of 20 something-year-olds with no money, no connections, no power. And people thought we were a joke. And we just kept relentlessly organizing [and] putting our heads together.”

“I did not have the political luxury of a cathartic performance. I had urgency. My rape kit had a literal timeline to be destroyed. … My justice would be literally thrown in the trash. … I needed to work with anyone and everyone within the legislative process in order to pass these laws. That profoundly shaped the way that I negotiated my rights. … Democracy inherently requires its citizens to hash things out. And so when survivors at Rise or any organizer enters a room of a Senator, they leave their political tribalism at the door.”

“When I got there, even our lead sponsors, the lead senators and representatives who work on this bill, said, ‘I’m so sorry. It’s not going to pass this time.’ And for the next 14 hours, the Rise team and I literally just walked into the decision-makers’ offices and said, ‘I’m here. Here’s why I care about this issue. Respectfully, please listen to our stories.’ We asked people to call into the speaker’s office. I witnessed those calls come in person. And at the end of those 14 hours, he brought it up for a vote, and it passed.”

RESOURCES

risenow.us

My favorite thing is this “School of Greatness” video podcast interview, this is where she uses the phrase “Hack the System”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtkLeG6h7Kg

And a written synopsis of the podcast: https://lewishowes.com/podcast/take-your-power-back-with-amanda-nguyen/  The Amanda quotes above are from this synopsis.