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May 22--They've written a book, launched a Web site, produced a film and designed a T-shirt. Combined with their huge potential constituency--women raising children--they have the makings of a fledgling social movement.
That's the hope of activists who launched MomsRising.org, an online organization aiming to build wide support for family-friendly policies such as paid parental leave and affordable child care.
"People have been working on these issues for decades, but they're just not getting traction," said the group's co-founder, Joan Blades, co-author of "The Motherhood Manifesto--What America's Moms Want and What to Do About It."
"There's a lot of good thinking out there, but it hasn't yet ignited a popular movement," Blades said. "This is about making the needs broadly understood."
The mother of two is no novice to online organizing. Eight years ago, she and her husband, Wes Boyd, who live in California, co-founded MoveOn.org, a liberal activist site that has mobilized members regarding issues from campaign finance reform to global warming.
MoveOn has registered more than 3 million members and spawned one of the country's larger political action committees.
It remains to be seen whether MomsRising can build a broad base by focusing on issues that women of all political persuasions care about, such as policies that make it easier for parents to more spend time with children.
The group's initial allies include women and family advocates, health-care activists and unions. More than 50,000 members have signed up since the site launched early this month.
"There's an incredible amount of activity and conversation around the issue of work and family" but relatively few instances of successful grassroots organizing, said Anne Ladky, executive director of Chicago-based Women Employed.
"This is the most grassroots of them all," she said of MomsRising, adding, "It has tremendous potential."
The group's agenda is taken from "The Motherhood Manifesto," whose royalties will to go the group. Blades' co-author is Seattle-based consultant Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, whose husband, Bill Finkbeiner, is a Republican state senator.
She and Blades argue that national policies and programs have not caught up with the reality that nearly three in four mothers work outside the home, many of them out of financial need.
The pair marshal an array of studies, mixing them with stories about mothers' lives to illustrate a relative lack of support for working parents and families. They note, for instance, that the United States is the only industrialized country other than Australia that fails to offer paid family leave.
"Issues like family leave, paid sick leave, vacation time, child care and health care are issues that families are struggling with," said John de Graaf, national coordinator for Take Back Your Time, a Seattle-based group that launched four years ago.
"Our group and MomsRising agree these issues will not be solved completely by voluntary action by businesses, however happy we are when businesses do the right thing," he said.
MomsRising's six-point agenda ranges from paid maternity and paternity leave to "TV We Choose," a universal TV rating system for parents coupled with technology that lets them select which programs appear in their homes.
The agenda also calls for "realistic and fair wages" and equal pay for equal work.
The book cites a study that found mothers were 44 percent less likely to be hired than non-mothers for the same job, given the same resume and experience. In addition, non-mothers were offered an average $11,000 more than mothers for the same salaried job, according to the study by Cornell University associate professor Shelley Correll.
"If you could just eliminate the bias against mothers [in hiring and pay], it would make a huge difference" in lifting family incomes, Blades said.
She was in Chicago last week with Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, to meet with local child-care providers at the home of Angenita Tanner, whose story is featured in the book.
Tanner and other members of SEIU Local 880 made history last year when they became the first union of home child-care providers to win a state contract. The agreement capped a nearly 10-year organizing campaign.
Quality, affordable child care is high on MomsRising's agenda, coupled with living wages and health-care benefits for child-care providers.
"We tried to find places where there can be broad agreement," Blades said, but she conceded her group's agenda is politically ambitious.
"This is not a slam dunk," she said, "but it's something that needs to happen."
berose@tribune.com
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